Transact-SQL Reference

Northwind Sample Database

The Northwind Traders sample database contains the sales data for a fictitious company called Northwind Traders, which imports and exports specialty foods from around the world.

If you have made changes to the Northwind database, you can reinstall it by running a script from the Install directory of your Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 installation:

  1. At the command prompt, change to the Mssql\Install directory.

  2. Use the osql utility to run the Instnwnd.sql script: 
    osql/Usa /Psapassword /Sservername /iinstnwnd.sql /oinstnwnd.rpt
  3. Check Instnwnd.rpt for reported errors.

The database is created in the Data directory of your SQL Server installation.

Instnwnd.sql is a large file. If you want to view Instnwnd.sql using Notepad, first turn off the Notepad Word Wrap option. If Word Wrap is on, opening the file and each scrolling operation will take a long time. Even turning Word Wrap off after the file has been opened takes a long time.