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Canonical Synthetic Dataset Blueprint

Meridian’s story can operate at enterprise scale, but the lab begins with small deterministic synthetic datasets so the learner can inspect, reason about, break, repair, and reproduce the work.

Dataset Shape Starting rows Purpose
customers_crm CSV 500 CRM-shaped customer source; intentionally contains some missing/stale contact data.
customers_pos CSV 350 Store loyalty/customer source with different identifiers and name/address formatting.
customers_service JSON 220 Service identities/cases with nested interaction context.
products CSV / PostgreSQL 150 Product/SKU attributes, categories and lifecycle status.
suppliers CSV / PostgreSQL 30 Supplier master candidates.
supplier_products PostgreSQL 250 Many-to-many supplier/product relationships.
orders PostgreSQL 2,000 Order headers; mix of known customers and synthetic guest orders.
order_items PostgreSQL 5,000 Order lines at item grain.
locations PostgreSQL 8 Stores/fulfillment centers for lab-scale use.
inventory_snapshot CSV / PostgreSQL 1,200 Product/location/time inventory observations.
service_cases JSON / PostgreSQL 200 Structured case fields plus text notes.
reference_* CSV / PostgreSQL Small Country/state/order status/return reason/product category code sets.
documents DOCX/PDF/TXT 20–40 Synthetic policies, supplier docs, invoices and service attachments.
click_events JSON/Parquet 100k+ later Chapter 14 scale/format-awareness dataset; generated only when needed.

Dataset rules

  • Use synthetic data only.
  • Preserve canonical raw source files; do not overwrite them during cleaning/transformation exercises.
  • When exact answer keys depend on the data, use deterministic generation so results can be reproduced.
  • Document intentional defects rather than allowing accidental corruption to become the lab state.
  • Distinguish story scale from lab scale; the smaller sample is deliberate for learning and does not redefine Meridian’s business size.
  • Every dataset should identify its producing business process and source system.
  • Sensitive-looking attributes are synthetic and exist only to practice governance/security/ethics concepts safely.

Source: Meridian Commerce Group Enterprise Data Management Casebook, Section 8.