The Nearby Supernova Factory aims at discovering and stud- ying
a large sample of nearby (0.03 < z < 0.08) thermonuclear
supernovae. Potential targets are extracted from the unbiased
Palomar-QUEST survey, and follow-up spectro-photometric observations
are performed using the dedicated Supernovae Integral-Field
Spectrograph. The current sample comprises more than 2700
flux-calibrated optical spectra (320-1000 nm) from 181 supernovæ
followed over their full life-time. Specific operation and
data-reduction issues are discussed, and first scientific results
from this unprecedented dataset are presented.