> Likewise, selecting a column not present in a GROUP BY leads to random values being returned. That hasn't been the default behavior for something like 5 year

> Likewise, selecting a column not present in a GROUP BY leads to random values being returned. That hasn't been the default behavior for something like 5 years. Beyond that the values aren't "random" as much as "one of the values from the set" which can be a useful feature in cares where you want any of the values and don't want the performance hit that comes with using an aggregate function particularly on very very large sets.