Home Forums Article Discussions Article Discussions by Author Discuss Content Posted by Jeff Moden Generating Test Data: Part 1 - Generating Random Integers and Floats RE: Generating Test Data: Part 1 - Generating Random Integers and Floats

  • March 26, 2012 at 4:51 pm

    #1464635

    GPO (3/26/2012)

    That's a good point to bring up. A random distribution will create a uniform distribution across a range of data

    I heartily agree. It's been a long time since I studied statistical distributions but a basic understanding of them is hugely useful. It would be great to have a method of generating random data that approximated a distribution, whether it be Gaussian or exponential decay, or an F distribution or whatever.

    A common phenomenon is where a column might validly accept one of say 30 integers. The vast majority of the time people will record one of five values and the frequency of recording of the others tapers off, with a few being used exceeding rarely. If you were testing things like index cardinality and column statistics generation, I wonder whether you'd get more representative testing results if your test data could mimic the distribution of what you expected to occur in production.

    Hmmmm... maybe there needs to be a Part 4 to this series.

    --Jeff Moden

    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

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    How to post code problems
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