Anyone know how I can select only 5 random records from an Informix table?

Unless you give the order by, there is no guarantee on how you will get the records from the table.

5 records you can get by executing the following

select first 5 * from table_name

Cheers

The process that I have used in the past is based upon selecting random ROWID's with the range min(ROWID) and max(ROWID).

I used a random number routine to generate a random number between the min and the max and then SELECT the row based upon ROWID. HOWEVER, just because you generate a number does not mean that that ROWID exists. So the SELECT statement was something like "SELECT FIRST 1 ... WHERE ROWID >= myrandonmumber"