This is a mirror of https://www.cri.ensmp.fr/people/coelho/datafiller.html. See that site for updated documentation.
This script generates random data from a database schema enriched with simple directives in SQL comments to drive 29 data generators which cover typical data types and their combination. Reasonable defaults are provided, especially based on key and type constraints, so that few directives should be necessary. The minimum setup is to specify the relative size of tables with directive mult so that data generation can be scaled.
See the TUTORIAL section Also, run with --validate=comics or --validate=library and look at the output for didactic examples.
--debug or -D
--drop
Drop tables before recreating them. This implies option --filter, otherwise there would be no table to fill.
Default is not to.
--encoding=enc or -e enc
Set this encoding for input and output files.
Default is no explicit encoding.
--filter or -f, reverse with --no-filter
Work as a filter, i.e. send the schema input script to stdout and then the generated data. This is convenient to pipe the result of the script directly for execution to the database command.
Default is to only ouput generated data.
--help or -h
--man or -m
--null RATE or -n RATE
Probability to generate a null value for nullable attributes.
Default is 0.01, which can be overriden by the null directive at the schema level, or per-attributes provided null rate.
--offset OFFSET or -O OFFSET
Set default offset for integer generators on primary keys. This is useful to extend the already existing content of a database for larger tests.
Default is 1, which can be overriden by the offset directive at the schema level, or per-attribute provided offset.
--pod COMMAND
Override pod conversion command used by option --man.
Default is 'pod2usage -verbose 3'.
--quiet or -q
Generate less verbose SQL output.
Default is to generate one echo when starting to fill a table.
--seed SEED or -S SEED
Seed overall random generation with provided string.
Default uses OS supplied randomness or current time.
--size SIZE
Set overall scaling. The size is combined with the mult directive value on a table to compute the actual number of tuples to generate in each table.
Default is 100, which can be overriden with the size directive at the schema level.
--target (postgresql|mysql) or -t ...
Target database engine. MySQL support is really experimental.
Default is to target PostgreSQL.
--test='directives...'
Run tests for any generator with some directives. If the directives start with !, show an histogram. If the directives start with -, show results on one-line. This is convenient for unit testing, or to check what would be the output of a set of directives.
Examples: --size=100 --test='int size=10 mangle' would show 100 integers between 1 and 10 drawn uniformly. --test='!bool rate=0.3' may show False: 69.32%, True: 30.68%, stating the rate at which True and False were seen during the test.
Directive type can be used within --test=... to provide the target SQL type when testing.
--transaction or -T
Use a global transaction.
Default is not to.
--tries=NUM
How hard to try to satisfy a compound unique constraint before giving up on a given tuple.
Default is 10.
--truncate
Delete table contents before filling.
Default is not to.
--type=CUSTOM
--validate=(unit|internal|comics|library|pgbench)
Output validation test cases. All but the unit tests can be processed with psql.
sh> datafiller --validate=internal | psqlThis option sets --filter automatically, although it can be forced back with --no-filter.
Default is to process argument files or standard input.
--version, -v or -V