Unit testing at the database level has always been tough. Until recently most developers working at the database level simply avoided unit testing their logic and stored procedures. In this InfoQ article, Cory Foy demonstrates how to implement Test Driven Development within the database for SQL Server.
With the techniques outlined in his article and Visual Studio for Database Professionals, developers:
- know where the true representation of the database is stored
- are enabled to modify the schema and forward changes to be modified to a DBA for approval
- are able to make changes to the schema while understanding the impact of their changes
- provided the ability to unit test stored procedures including how to generate test data
There is one caveat, currently this process only works with SQL Server databases.