RDG version 3.3.0 now available

February 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Random Data Generator version 3.3.0 is now available for purchase or upgrade.

Random Data Generator screenshot

This version features several enhancements, including:

  • Additional name prefixes (Mr, Mrs, etc)
  • Additional street names (Road, Circle, Street, etc)
  • Excel strings are limited to 32,767 characters (other output not affected)
  • Transient custom lists — RDG reads your custom lists and lets you randomly shuffle them into the output for the current Excel session. Management of custom lists remains with Excel
  • Quantity of records can now be saved across sessions. If you regularly request large (or small) numbers of records, RDG will remember this for you. One less thing to enter before getting what you came for
  • RANDOM.ORG API integration — request random integers and strings using atmospheric noise provided by the random.org API
  • Output can now be sent to the current worksheet
  • RegEx Parser — as mentioned previously, create your own custom output using pattern masks like '\h???\h'
  • New fields:
    • Marital Status
    • MAC Address
    • UUID
    • NPI Number
    • IMEI Code
    • CAS Registry Number
    • NDC
    • ISO Country Code
    • ICD-10 Code
  • Data may be pasted with or without headers. This does not apply to external formats like MySQL, HTML, XML and Access databases
  • Forward compatibility has been added, so if you have Excel 2003 with the compatibility pack installed, you will be able to save to XLSX, XLSB and XLSM formats
  • Diner's Club has been added as a credit card format, and they can be formatted with hyphens
  • API calls may be made using an optional parameter to tell RDG not to prepend single quotes to the return data
  • A new API method called "GetFields" may be used to return an array of all available field names
  • Windows 8 compatibility was confirmed

Upgrade emails will be going out shortly.

There are now 64 available fields and 14 different output formats! If you were holding off on purchasing, there is no excuse any longer.

Thanks to Rick Rothstein for identifying a few bugs in the new version.

Buy RDG
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Regex Parser in RDG 3.3

October 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I am so stoked about the RegEx parser in the upcoming version of RDG. Version 3.3 will have a RegEx parser similar (albeit primitive) to other products that produce random data.

Using a pattern mask you can create your own types of random output.

  • '?' stands for one of any character (alphanumeric upper and lower case)
  • '@' stands for one of any letter
  • '#' stands for one of any number
  • '\' followed by any character, prints that character literally, except '\h' prints a hexadecimal character (0-F). Any other characters are printed literally.

For example, create your own credit card format:
####-####-###-####

Or output phone numbers:
(###) ###-####

GUIDs can easily be simulated using this mask:
\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h-\h\h\h\h-\h\h\h\h-\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h

Or your company has a unique ID numbering scheme like this:
ID-@@-####

Can you guess what the output of the field would be?

Even street addresses are possible:
##-## ## Street

My ultimate goal is to create a full blown RegEx parser so that more diverse types of syntactically valid pattern masks may be entered.

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RDG version 3.3 coming soon

September 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I am currently writing version 3.3 of Random Data Generator. This version will feature even more enhancements. Here's what I have done so far:

  • Added more name prefixes
  • Strings cannot be more than 32,767 characters (due to Excel's cell limit)
  • Transient custom lists – Now you can randomly select from your custom lists in Excel on a per-session basis
  • Quantity of records can be saved across sessions
  • RANDOM.ORG API integration – Integers and Strings can be returned from the API (letters and numbers only, no special characters). Quota and query limits strictly enforced.
  • Added new output type (for pro version): "This Worksheet" which puts random data into a selected range on currently active worksheet. Overwrites existing data.
  • Added new field (for pro version): "Marital Status" field (either "Single" or "Married")
  • Introduced primitive regex pattern mask for random strings

    • On the Options form, enter a pattern mask and click "Apply to Random Strings". Use the following characters:

    '?' stands for one of any character (any capital or lowercase letter or number)
    '@' stands for one of any letter (capital or lowercase)
    '#' stands for one of any number
    '\' followed by any character prints that character literally, except '\h' prints a hexadecimal character (0-F)

    Any other characters are printed literally.

  • Random data can be pasted with or without headers (does not apply to MySQL, HTML, XML or MDB/ACCDB output)
  • Free version will be a 30 day trial

Future Plans

I am planning on implementing the following features in some future version of RDG:

  • Importing random data into existing Excel/Access file (inserting a new worksheet or table)
  • Excel 2003 forward compatibility (save as XLSX in Excel 2003 if compatibility pack is installed)
  • A more robust RegEx parser (i.e. put in a RegEx pattern and RDG outputs strings that match the pattern)
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Random Data Generator 3.2 coming soon

November 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

An upgrade to RDG is in the pipeline and will be coming very soon! This version will feature:

  • A configurable options page (which will be expanded in future versions) to specify and persist options across different sessions of RDG
  • More demographic data points for random output
  • More output options

Details to follow in the announcement post.

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