So I’m reading through the introduction of O’Reilly’s SQL Cookbook and I get to this part that says:

The majority of the examples in this book involve the use of two tables, EMP and DEPT. The EMP table is a simple 14-row table with only numeric, string, and date fields. The DEPT table is a simple four-row table with only numeric and string fields. These tables appear in many old database texts, and the many-to-one relationship between departments and employees is well understood.

I love it when I stumble upon historical gems like this. So I went searching for a quick dump of the SQL to create and populate these sample tables, and I couldn’t find any. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did stumble upon a few variations, but it appears that the canonical version comes to us courtesy of Oracle. Of course I was looking for something a little more MySQL-friendly.

So I ran the Oracle SQL through MySQL with a few changes: I changed the HIREDATE datetime column to a date column, and I changed the format of the date in the insert statements from dd-mon-yyyy to yyyy-mm-dd. Then I mysqldump-ed out the SQL to get the version you see below. Just for my own sanity, I also lowercased the table and column names. You should be able to copy and paste it directly into the MySQL command line. Happy SQLing.

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS emp;

CREATE TABLE emp (
  empno decimal(4,0) NOT NULL,
  ename varchar(10) default NULL,
  job varchar(9) default NULL,
  mgr decimal(4,0) default NULL,
  hiredate date default NULL,
  sal decimal(7,2) default NULL,
  comm decimal(7,2) default NULL,
  deptno decimal(2,0) default NULL
);

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dept;

CREATE TABLE dept (
  deptno decimal(2,0) default NULL,
  dname varchar(14) default NULL,
  loc varchar(13) default NULL
);

INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7369','SMITH','CLERK','7902','1980-12-17','800.00',NULL,'20');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7499','ALLEN','SALESMAN','7698','1981-02-20','1600.00','300.00','30');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7521','WARD','SALESMAN','7698','1981-02-22','1250.00','500.00','30');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7566','JONES','MANAGER','7839','1981-04-02','2975.00',NULL,'20');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7654','MARTIN','SALESMAN','7698','1981-09-28','1250.00','1400.00','30');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7698','BLAKE','MANAGER','7839','1981-05-01','2850.00',NULL,'30');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7782','CLARK','MANAGER','7839','1981-06-09','2450.00',NULL,'10');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7788','SCOTT','ANALYST','7566','1982-12-09','3000.00',NULL,'20');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7839','KING','PRESIDENT',NULL,'1981-11-17','5000.00',NULL,'10');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7844','TURNER','SALESMAN','7698','1981-09-08','1500.00','0.00','30');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7876','ADAMS','CLERK','7788','1983-01-12','1100.00',NULL,'20');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7900','JAMES','CLERK','7698','1981-12-03','950.00',NULL,'30');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7902','FORD','ANALYST','7566','1981-12-03','3000.00',NULL,'20');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('7934','MILLER','CLERK','7782','1982-01-23','1300.00',NULL,'10');

INSERT INTO dept VALUES ('10','ACCOUNTING','NEW YORK');
INSERT INTO dept VALUES ('20','RESEARCH','DALLAS');
INSERT INTO dept VALUES ('30','SALES','CHICAGO');
INSERT INTO dept VALUES ('40','OPERATIONS','BOSTON');

Judging by the data, this has been around since 1982.