Installing the Make-a-Mammal (MAM) database

This pages gives instructions on how to install the MAM database on your computer. 

Downloading the database

Begin by downloading the database by clicking on this link.  This will give you a zipped file.  When you double-click on this, you should see what it contains:

Choose to extract all of the files (there is only one!) from this zipped file. This screen dump is for Windows 7, but other Windows versions will be similar.

You'll then probably need to repeat this process to get at the actual SQL file:

Eventually you'll be able to extract the SQL script.

Running the script

To generate the Make-a-Mammal database, you'll need to run the script you've downloaded.  In SQL Server Management Studio, choose to open a file:

You can also press CTRL + O to do this.

Double-click on the script file you've downloaded and extracted:

Choose to open this file.

Management Studio displays the script:

The start of the (long) script to generate the database and its tables.

You can now execute the script:

Either click on this tool or press the F5 key.

The script will now generate the database and its tables, although this takes a while:

On my laptop this took 13 seconds, but yours may take quite a bit longer.

Viewing the database

At first sight it may seem that nothing has been created, but this may be because you haven't refreshed your databases:

Right-click on Databases and choose to refresh the list.

You can now expand the MAM database to see its contents:

The tables in the MAM database.

You're now in a position to continue with the rest of this tutorial!