[thelist] Dummy database data

Luther, Ron ron.luther at hp.com
Tue Jan 18 08:29:09 CST 2005


Chris Nicholls asked:

>>Many of us no doubt have used "lorem ipsum" text to fill out designs 
>>with dummy content.

>>I need the database equivalent - dummy data to populate tables with 
>>contact information, as well as titles for books/songs.

>>Has anyone ever come across such a resource, or have any ideas as  to 
>>how we might produce some quickly?

Hi Chris,

I'm not aware of anything like that ... but I really doubt how effective 
it would be. Anybody two developers building the same app from scratch 
are likely to come up with three different data structures. Third party 
dummy data is not likely to be in the structure you want to use.

(Also, your dummy data should be set up to check the 'fringe cases' that 
you expect to see in your live data ... that way you can shake out your 
app. Third party data is not going to know what those are.)

>>We could make up and then type the data in ourselves, but we need a lot 
>>of records (ideally 3000 or so) to showcase our new product effectively, 
>>and I doubt we would manage it.

Sure you can. Build it in Excel (or the OpenOffice or StarOffice equivalent). 
Even if you can't load that directly, you should be able to load a CSV export of 
that data.



>>Maybe a demo of a product that comes with a dummy DB?

You mean like the "Northwind Database"? I think those are generally okay 
for learning SQL ... but I wouldn't use one to try to prove in or 'proof 
of concept' my app. (Try a google search.)



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