Kind of cool feature! DBMS_RANDOM

In 8.1.6 Oracle added a new feature which I don't believe is very well documented, it is great.

DBMS_RANDOM.STRING([OPT], [LEN]); This will create a random string with a length of up to 60 characters.  Great for force populating tables. The opt is for things like L, U, M (Lower, Upper, Mixed case), there are a few different options.

One thing I did to force populate a table is:   DBMS_RANDOM.STRING('U', DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE(5, 10));

Which creates random string with random length between 5 and 10 characters.  Run 10,000,000 times, I got a table with 30 columns and 10,000,000 random rows in no time.

"Do not criticize someone until you walked a mile in their shoes, that way when you criticize them, you are a mile a way and have their shoes."

Christopher R. Spence
Oracle DBA
Phone: (978) 322-5744
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  Received on Wed Sep 05 2001 - 15:29:15 CDT