[thelist] Dummy database data

[Chris Nicholls]

 >>
If anyone here *does* use TestData.com -- now or later -- I'd appreciate 
hearing about your experiences.
<<

Thanks for your replies everyone on the test data thread.

I ended up using www.testdata.com

Ron, I didn't make it clear, but I wasn't looking for data for 
application testing, just some dummy, realistic contact information.

[In fact we *are* going to use a client-derived dataset for demoing our 
new system, with their permission, but are going to merge in dummy names 
and addresses to replace the client's ones.]

Testdata.com was easy and quick to use; after defining my dataset, and 
coughing up $9.99, I was able to download it within about a minute.

I did have one problem; I'd asked for a 10,000 record dataset, but the 
downloaded file in fact contained only 1800 records, and a column 
containing a supposedly sequential numeric had about 20 duplicate values.

A little irked, I wrote to their support right away, and got a helpful 
reply within 24 hours explaining that because I had marked some of the 
columns as "unique values", the dataset had topped out when their data 
library ran out of unique values (I think the column in question was 
something like 'street name')

In hindsight it was unecessary/greedy for me to have specified unique 
values for this column, since the combination of first_name, last_name, 
street, city etc would certainly have been unique.

But I do think it might have been useful for them to have pointed out 
this restriction in their service though, if only to have saved both 
them and me some time.

Anyway, they set me up to be able to generate a repeat dataset (for 
free), this time with the unique constraints removed.

All in all a good service though, and I would recommend them.

Note that I was only generating one table, not something more elaborate 
with linked tables, foreign keys etc.

-Chris