3 History

The Sakila sample database was designed as a replacement to the world sample database, also provided by Oracle.

The world sample database provides a set of tables containing information on the countries and cities of the world and is useful for basic queries, but lacks structures for testing MySQL-specific functionality and features found in MySQL 5 and higher.

Development of the Sakila sample database began in early 2005. Early designs were based on the database used in the Dell whitepaper Three Approaches to MySQL Applications on Dell PowerEdge Servers.

Where Dell's sample database was designed to represent an online DVD store, the Sakila sample database is designed to represent a DVD rental store. The Sakila sample database still borrows film and actor names from the Dell sample database.

Development was accomplished using MySQL Query Browser for schema design, with the tables being populated by a combination of MySQL Query Browser and custom scripts, in addition to contributor efforts (see Section 8, “Acknowledgments”).

After the basic schema was completed, various views, stored routines, and triggers were added to the schema; then the sample data was populated. After a series of review versions, the first official version of the Sakila sample database was released in March 2006.