Mondial database for SQL Server 2008

I like free, standard, sample databases. One that I've been looking at for quite a while is the Mondial database currently available at Institute for Informatics Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. This set of data (from an old CIA World factbook and other sources), is available not only as a relational database, but as XML, RDF, and even F-logic.

The problem with using this with SQL Server has been the lack of a DATE datatype with the appropriate value range. The DATE datatype is used as "Date of Independence" and some countries have independence dates before 1753. So you'd have to represent it as a VARCHAR. Yuk.

With the new datatypes in SQL Server 2008, this is do-able without compromise, so here it is. In addition, since many of the locations (in two tables) come with latitude and longitude columns, I've added a GEOGRAPHY column, so when CTP5 comes out we'll have something to use GEOGRAPHY with.

Source scripts included. Enjoy!