The Northwind database was first released in Microsoft Access Database as a sample database with data already pre-populated. The database contains sales data for a fictitious company called Northwind Traders, which imports and exports specialty foods from around the world. You can experiment with Access in the Northwind database while you're learning and developing ideas for Access applications.

We converted the famous Northwind database to MySQL and use it as the the basis for most of the tutorials on this site.

What does the MySQL Northwind database contain?

Our MySQL Northwind database has kept in line with standard relational database concept and structure with real world business scenarios.

The database contains business data for a period of two years so it makes learning SQL queries much easier, especially for summarizing data, aggregation, and even trend analysis.

The following 8 tables exist in MySQL Northwind database. Various tutorials have been created around this database, including concepts about indexes, constraints, foreign keys, normalization, SQL queries, relational database design concept, etc.

1. Categories - list of product categories.
2. Suppliers – who supply products to Northwind Traders.
3. Products - the products Northwind Traders buys and sells.
4. Customers - buyers of Northwind products.
5. Employees - people who work for Northwind Traders.
6. Shippers – companies who ship products from Northwind Traders to its customers.
7. Orders - information about each order such as the customer who placed the order, employee who handled the order, order and shipment date, which shipper made the shipment, etc.
8. Order Details - transaction details of each order such as products, unit price and quantity, discount applied.

Entity relationship diagram for Northwind

Below is a simplified relational view of the Northwind database. If you are not familiar with relational database design, you can get a quick start with this tutorial.

Happy Coding!

Other tutorials in this category

1. Create Northwind database in MySQL

2. The Categories table in MySQL Northwind database

3. The Suppliers table in MySQL Northwind database

4. The Products table in MySQL Northwind database

5. The Customers table in MySQL Northwind database

6. The Employees table in MySQL Northwind database

7. The Shippers table in MySQL Northwind database

8. The Orders table in MySQL Northwind database

9. The Order Details table in MySQL Northwind database

10. SQL Views in MySQL Northwind database

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