Where did Microsoft get the “Northwind Traders” data?

5 points by amiamigo 4 years ago | 6 comments

So they say, Northwind Traders is the hello world of databases. Am just curious, does anyone know where Microsoft got that data. Was it all randomly generated?

tomcam 4 years ago |

I looked into this when I worked there almost 3 decades ago. It was originally the sample database for Microsoft Access, of course, and was the first of its kind. I surveyed pretty much all the database managers made for personal computers at the time, and it was always a pain in the neck to work up something like a usable sample set. It was inspired by (not copied from) customer lists, but of course extensively massaged and completely removing anything that might accidentally seem identifiable. Even back then Microsoft was high profile, so they made sure there was nothing that could get them into trouble. Putting it together was a fairly complex process with considerations for localization, fake city names that didn’t sound bad, somewhat realistic record count, etc.

FearNotDaniel 4 years ago |

I just walked into Alfreds Futterkiste and bought a family pack of delicious, ready-to-eat data off the shelf.

tomcam 4 years ago | |

I do it old-school. I go shoot my data in the wild and prepare it myself on the kitchen counter.

giaour 4 years ago |

A team of PMs probably spent a full year putting it together by hand.

tomcam 4 years ago | |

Not certain of this, but I think it was a single PM working part time for a couple of months. It was not a trivial task. Microsoft ran lean and mean back then, even when the company had 5,000-10,000 people.

reiichiroh 4 years ago |

From CONTOSO CORPORATION