The pubs, NorthWind and AdventureWorks Sample Databases
By Kalman Toth, M.Phil., M.Phil., MCDBA

May 18, 2005

I learned transact-SQL from a Sybase manual, which featured the “pubs” database. Microsoft SQL server product line originates from Sybase, which is a UNIX database quite popular with financial companies in the New York City metropolitan area. My first SQL server was operating on OS/2 from IBM. That was on the 96th Floor of World Trade Center North Tower when I was working for Deloitte and Touche.

The pubs sample databases features tables like authors (writers), titles(books) and publishers. Not exactly a normalized database, but everybody understand how the book business is working, therefore it is great for instructional purposes.

With SQL Server 7 came a new sample database NorthWind, perhaps an allusion to Microsoft’s Northeast origin. The NorthWind database models a gourmet food distributor. It is almost normalized. It introduces common business design concepts such as the Order and Orderdetail tables along the line of parent-children relationship.

SQL Server 2005 touts the AdventureWorks sample database. It models a full-blown mountain bike manufacturer. It categorizes tables under 5 schemas: HumanResources, Person, Production, Purchasing and Sales. The logical data model can be viewed in Visio. It is normalized. Some of the tables are populated with thousands of rows. Also features tables with populated XML columns. Some part of the model, for example Bill of Materials entity, not easy to understand unless you happen to be in manufacturing.

While pubs and NorthWind don’t come with SQL Server 2005, they can be downloaded free of charge. I recommend the download. You should have all 3 sample databases on your SQL 2005 server.