SO notes:
You could also use a stored procedure. Consider the following table as an example:
CREATE TABLE your_table (id int NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT, val int);
Then you could add a stored procedure like this:
DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE prepare_data()
BEGIN
DECLARE i INT DEFAULT 100;
WHILE i < 100000 DO
INSERT INTO your_table (val) VALUES (i);
SET i = i + 1;
END WHILE;
END$$
DELIMITER ;
When you call it, you'll have 100k records:
CALL prepare_data();
Many thanks to Tarun Lalwani for his excellent blog post