Populating your tables

Next week you will look in detail at data maintenance issues; however, to test the database you have just created, you will need some test data. Download the script species_data.sql and save it to your script directory. Feel free to look at the contents, but you should not have to change anything. The script inserts sighting details for the following observers, species and locations. Note that the tables below are not intended to correspond to your table structure.

Observers

first_name	surname
James	Smith
Anne	Jones
Andrew	Brown
Sarah	Green
Gordon	Stewart
Barbara	Bruce

Species

family	genus	species	common_name
rhinocerotidae	diceros	bicornis	Black rhinoceros
hominidae	pan	troglodytes	Common chimpanzee
felidae	panthera	uncia	Snow leopard
ursidae	ailuropoda	melanoleuca	Giant panda
canidae	canis	rufus	Red wolf
pteropodidae	epomops	franqueti	Franquet's epauletted fruit bat

Locations

continent	country	region
Africa	Namibia	Etosha Pan
Africa	Uganda	Kanungu
Asia	Tajikistan	Gorno-Badakhshan
North America	Canada	Ontario
Asia	China	Qinghai
Asia	China	Yunnan

Run the script in SQL Developer. If you any of your columns are too small to fit the data you will see the message ORA-12899: value too large for column. In such cases, alter your schema creation script and re-run it to update the table definitions, and then re-run species_data.sql to insert the data.

If you see any other errors, try to work out what the problem is, or ask for help.

Notice that one of the species names contains an apostrophe. Normally a single quote marks the beginning or the end of a text string - locate the corresponding insert statement in the file to see how this error is avoided.