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by kevinqi 241 days ago
my only minor critique is using lorem ipsum examples. It tends to make me want to gloss over instead of reading; I prefer seeing realistic data. other than that, it's a really cool post
2 comments

You may be interested in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/exampledb.py -sql -n 2 example.sql:

    begin;
    insert into cust (id, name, company, streetaddress, city, state, zip) values (1, 'Jacqueline Gagnon', 'Baker Group', '218 Miller Dr.', 'Riverside', 'KS', '51859');
    commit;
    begin;
    insert into cust (id, name, company, streetaddress, city, state, zip) values (2, 'Wayne Bennett', 'FF Petroleum LLC', '4375 Moore Dr.', 'Mount Vernon', 'MS', '98270');
    select setval('cust_id_seq', 2);
    commit;
    begin;
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (1, 'Biological blue steel doll', 30.4);
    commit;
    begin;
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (2, 'Gray cotton electronic boxers, size L', 13.3);
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (3, 'Blue cotton intimate blazer, ages 2–5', 37.3);
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (4, 'Daily beige steel car', 14.6);
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (5, 'Black spandex daily blazer, size L', 24.1);
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (6, 'Blue wool dynamic briefs, ages 3–10', 79.0);
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (7, 'Blue spandex ultrasonic dress, child’s size', 31.9);
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (8, 'Gold wool daily boxers, ages 3–10', 8.85);
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (9, 'Red cotton utility boxers, ages 2–5', 28.9);
    insert into product (id, name, unitprice) values (10, 'Gray polyester ultrasonic briefs, ages 3–10', 15.3);
    -- ...
It also creates the tables, including invoice and lineitem tables. It's still a bit of a dull accounting example, rather than something like food, superheroes, social networks, zoo animals, sports, or dating, but I think the randomness does add a little bit of humor.

Although now we have LLMs, and maybe they'd do a better job.

Was going to post the same thing. Lorem Ipsum makes the data too hard to distinguish. I get that due to the dynamic nature of the examples the text needed to be generated, but Latin isn't the best choice IMO.

Otherwise great article, thank you!

It's the same for me when foo and bar are used as examples.
Someone gave me the advice to use animals, ideally animals of very different sizes or colours. People instantly picture them and remember them.