Re: Sample databases?

On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 12:41:01AM +0000, Josh Rovero wrote:
> mlw wrote:
> > I am doing some testing and development on Postgres.
> >
> > Is there, by chance, a good source of data which can be used as a test
> > database? I have been using a music database, but it is proprietary, and
> > makes me uncomfortable to post public tests.
>
> The NIMA web site has tab-delimited version of the
> Airfield Information database files. Lots of data,
> many tables to relate. Some elements are geographic,
> others are text and numeric feature attributes.

It would be no bad thing to include benchmarks against large, real
sample databases. However, it would be very bad indeed to include
those large databases in the distribution.

I suggest that each such benchmark script include code to check if
the sample database is present and, if not, download it from its
canonical site, massage it into shape and import it. Then there
would be no need to limit the number and variety of large sample
databases that a build may be tried against.

I gather that it takes two weeks to run the regression tests for
IBM's DB2 for a single target platform.

Nathan Myers
ncm(at)zembu(dot)com