Fill database tables with a large amount of test data

Question

I need to load a table with a large amount of test data. This is to be used for testing performance and scaling.

How can I easily create 100,000 rows of random/junk

Answer 1

If you want more control over the data, try something like this (in PHP):

where function generate_test_values would return a string formatted like "('val1', 'val2', ...)". If this takes a long time, you can batch them so you're not making so many db calls, e.g.:

for ($i = 0; $i < $num; $i += 10) {
  $values = array();
  for ($j = 0; $j < 10; $j++) {
    $values[] = generate_test_data($i + $j);
  }
  mysql_query($sql . join(", ", $values));
}

would only run 10000 queries, each adding 10 rows.