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Large, Free, and Interesting SQL-ready Datasets?

Posted by Cliff on from the drop-in-data dept.

Jon H asks: "I'd like to teach myself various platforms or technologies, involving accessing databases. The problem is, my ideas for projects to learn on usually are boring, toy projects, involving lots of boring data entry in order to create a useful database. Things like personal library databases. This doesn't particularly interest me. It would be much easier if I had a big, interesting dataset which I could load into an SQL database without too much trouble. Then I could spend my time on the php, or WebObjects, or JBoss, or whatever. I'd like something more real than the usual toy demo databases. Something weighty, 20 megabytes and up, big enough for poor software design to cause performance issues which might not be seen in smaller databases. Ideally, it'd be in a form that could easily be loaded into an SQL database, perhaps even including a schema. Any links would be appreciated. Do such beasts exist?

5 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. USDA by L.+VeGas · · Score: 5, Informative

    One I've used for laughs is the USDA Nutrient Database. It gives you, well, nutrient information on just about any food you can think of. It's normalized, and just complicated enough to have fun with.

    You're going to have to google it yourself, though.

    --
    Best Windows Freeware
  2. NIST databases by bmwm3nut · · Score: 5, Interesting

    nist has a bunch of data. i remember a while ago downloading handwritten characters to make handwriting recognition software. they have data for just about everything, the chemistry data is probably some of the best to put in a relational database. check out: http://www.nist.gov/srd/index.htm

  3. Census Data by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here's all the data you'll ever need, free of charge from the gov. Some appears to be freely available and some is restricted. Have fun.

    ftp://ftp2.census.gov/census_2000/datasets/

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  4. IMDb by br0ck · · Score: 5, Informative

    Use IMDbPY to populate a database with all data from the downloadable files from the Internet Movie Database.

  5. Datasets by Pathwalker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The USGS has a huge database of Streamflow data online.
    You can pull tables for rivers near you, and see how often they flood.

    With a bit of work, you can pull all sorts of things out of the current tiger dataset - for example, there are about 4.8 million unique street/zipcode combinations in the US.
    See how many streets near where you live are unique ( two streets just down the road from me - Kentvale and Uthers - appear to be unique).

    There's lots of interesting data out there, keep poking around in .gov sites, and you'll find all sorts of stuff.