Northwind

Northwind is a fictional wholesale company and a widely used sample database employed in Microsoft software products to illustrate relational database concepts. The dataset originated in the 1990s as part of Microsoft's demonstration materials and ships with early versions of Microsoft Access and SQL Server, among other platforms. It has since become a de facto standard for teaching database design, querying, forms, reports, and data modeling, and is frequently referenced in tutorials and documentation.

The Northwind schema centers on a simplified supply chain: customers place orders for products supplied by vendors, with order lines recorded in an Order Details table. The core tables commonly included are Customers, Orders, Order Details, Products, Categories, Suppliers, Employees, and Shippers. Relationships mirror typical business processes: Customers have Orders; Orders contain multiple Order Details referencing Products; Products belong to Categories and are supplied by Suppliers; Orders are processed by Employees and shipped via Shippers. The Order Details table typically stores UnitPrice, Quantity, and Discount to reflect line-item economics.

Variations exist for different database systems, and versions of the Northwind database have been ported to MySQL, PostgreSQL, and other platforms. It remains a popular teaching and demonstration resource, used to showcase queries such as totals by customer, product performance by category, and simple data normalization in a compact, easy-to-understand dataset.