The Chinook Database is a sample database available for several database products, including SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, DB2 and many others. The scripts are located under the Scrips folder. If you want to download the script for SQL Server, simply click the Download button located here. The Download button is on the right-hand side half way down the page. You can copy the text (script) and paste it into a new query in SSMS. Execute the query on a non-production server. The next three paragraphs are based on the README.md file. This database is thanks to Chris Woodruff.

The Chinook data model represents a digital media store, including tables for artists, albums, media tracks, invoices and customers. You can see the Chinook data model here.

Media related data was created using real data from an iTunes Library. It is possible for you to use your own iTunes Library to generate the SQL scripts, see instructions here. Customer and employee information was manually created using fictitious names, addresses that can be located on Google maps, and other well-formatted data (phone, fax, email, etc.). Sales information is auto generated using random data for a four-year period.

Why the name Chinook? The name of this sample database was based on the Northwind database. Chinooks are winds in the interior West of North America, where the Canadian Prairies and Great Plains meet various mountain ranges. Chinooks are most prevalent over southern Alberta in Canada. Chinook is a good name choice for a database that intents to be an alternative to Northwind.

Below is a list of the table names and the number of rows in the database, generated from a script.