On Friday 25 February 2005 09:06, Ian Lynch wrote:
Jacket Potato is a sample ready made database for the OOo 2.0 embedded database. It means you have a ready prepared data source with which to start teaching/learning.
I have a tab-separated text file containing the 217 entries for one complete year in the Heptonstall (near Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire) parish register of baptisms. (Sorry, I don't know which year, but I'd guess sometime in the 19th C). Fields are: month (numeric & as text); infant's name; father's forename, surname and occupation; and the township within Heptonstall parish. Being real individuals, but dead (thus outside the statutary scope of the DPA), I've found it has been more interesting for students than some other sample data sets, not only because it contains odities like Tho Pickles, Inkeeper (who had no less than 7 offspring baptised at the same time), a number of fathers with no occupation (unemployment isn't new!), entries such as that for Salley (whose 'father' is recorded as "Jane Jackson, Spinster"), not to mention several archaic occupations, such as Webster and Cordwainer. All those can provide associated research projects which bring the data to life - and thus make the database operations themselves interesting. Finally, its size makes it manageable for data entry (I used to split a class into 12 and give each team 1 month's data to enter, then concatenate them myself, but, of course, in tab-separated form, you can simply import it). If anyone wants a copy - or would like to post it on the web as a public resource - please apply off-list, with "Heptonstall Baptisms" in the subject line (so I can reconise the msg isn't spam). Hope that's useful, Roger