Glossary

Term	Definition
Row generator	A user-defined Python function which will provide one or more random column values for a single table when called.
Story generator	A user-defined Python generator function that yields rows, possibly multiple rows for multiple tables.
Generator (function)	A callable, referenced by name in config.yaml (e.g. dist_gen.normal), that produces one random value (or tuple of values) per call. See Built-in generators and proposers for the ones built into datafaker, or Including your own generators to write your own.
Proposer	An internal datafaker object, used by the propose command of configure-generators, that suggests a generator function and arguments for a column (or group of columns) and estimates how well it fits the real data. See Built-in generators and proposers.
Role	A tag (start or source) set on a column, via the role command in configure-generators or by hand in config.yaml, that some proposers use to find related columns – for example, the start role marks an anchor date that other dates in the same table can be generated as an offset from. See Built-in generators and proposers.
Destination database and destination schema	A database and a schema within that database where datafaker creates the synthetic data tables and inserts the synthetic data it generates.
Source database and source schema	A database and a schema within that database that datafaker will create a copy of and mimic when creating synthetic data.
Vocabulary Table	A table that can be copied in its entirety to the destination database.