Sample Data — An Intro to Adventure WorksFrom time to time, it’s handy to have access to some good, solid sample data. Now, actually coming up with a robust set of sample data that has no tie back to any proprietary business data can actually be a tricky prospect. It’s easy to generate a small amount of good data yourself, or a large amount of really random data, but neither of these are very robust. Fortunately, Microsoft comes to the rescue with their fictional company, Adventure Works, and the Adventure Works Databases.
Microsoft provides the following bio for the Adventure Works company over at Technet:
Adventure Works Cycles, the fictitious company on which the AdventureWorks sample databases are based, is a large, multinational manufacturing company. The company manufactures and sells metal and composite bicycles to North American, European and Asian commercial markets. While its base operation is located in Bothell, Washington with 290 employees, several regional sales teams are located throughout their market base.
In 2000, Adventure Works Cycles bought a small manufacturing plant, Importadores Neptuno, located in Mexico. Importadores Neptuno manufactures several critical subcomponents for the Adventure Works Cycles product line. These subcomponents are shipped to the Bothell location for final product assembly. In 2001, Importadores Neptuno, became the sole manufacturer and distributor of the touring bicycle product group.
Coming off a successful fiscal year, Adventure Works Cycles is looking to broaden its market share by targeting their sales to their best customers, extending their product availability through an external Web site, and reducing their cost of sales through lower production costs.
In addition to providing a realistic scenario for the Adventure Works company and a database full of realistic sample data, Microsoft continually updates the Adventure Works database for new versions of SQL Server and makes numerous variations of the databases available to highlight different technologies.
