Populating a table with random people

It happened I had  to  fill a table with realistic but not real people data.Here how did I managed it (ported to MySQL sintax).

First lets create a people table like this :

CREATE TABLE PEOPLE(NAME VARCHAR(20),

                                     SURNAME VARCHAR(20),

                                     SEX VARCHAR(1),

                                     DOB DATE);

Then create tables with sample names and surnames:

CREATE TABLE NAMES(NAME VARCHAR(20), SEX VARCHAR(1));

CREATE TABLE SURNAMES(SURNAME VARCHAR(20));

And fill them with some values:

INSERT INTO NAMES(NAME,SEX) VALUES(‘Jhon’,‘M’);

INSERT INTO NAMES(NAME,SEX) VALUES(‘Jack’,‘M’);

INSERT INTO NAMES(NAME,SEX) VALUES(‘Jeff’,‘M’);

INSERT INTO NAMES(NAME,SEX) VALUES(‘Judy’,‘F’);

INSERT INTO NAMES(NAME,SEX) VALUES(‘Jade’,‘F’);

INSERT INTO NAMES(NAME,SEX) VALUES(‘Jane’,‘F’);

INSERT INTO SURNAMES(SURNAME) VALUES(‘Red’);

INSERT INTO SURNAMES(SURNAME) VALUES(‘White’);

INSERT INTO SURNAMES(SURNAME) VALUES(‘Green’);

Now we’ll be able to get a single random person with a query like this:

SELECT NAME, SEX,

           CURDATE() - INTERVAL RAND()*365.25*100 DAY AS DOB,

                 (SELECT SURNAME FROM SURNAMES ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1) AS SURNAME

FROM NAMES ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1;

We can write a simple procedure to populate the table with the desired number of rows:

CREATE PROCEDURE FILL(IN NUM INT)

   BEGIN

       WHILE NUM > 0 DO

          INSERT INTO PEOPLE(NAME,SEX,DOB,SURNAME)

          SELECT NAME, SEX,

                            CURDATE() - INTERVAL RAND()*365.25*100 DAY AS DOB,

                         (SELECT SURNAME FROM SURNAMES ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1) AS SURNAME

         FROM NAMES ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1;

         SET NUM = NUM-1;

      END WHILE;

END;

We can call this procedure like this:

mysql> call FILL(10000);

Query OK, 1 row affected (40.73 sec)

A ten thousand people population in forty seconds (on PIII at 550Mz) is not bad.

Of course many improvements can be done like adding a random place of birth (based on a table of places) or making date of birth distribution more realistic.