SQL Data Generator

A series of discussions last week got me around to talking about the right way to test a system against a realistic set of data. The problem is simply this: without data in the test environment which is representative of what you’ll end up with in the production environment, it’s very difficult to properly simulate the way the app will behave after it rolls out. There are a whole bunch of counter-techniques for the empty database problem ranging from the tedious to the impractical to the downri...

Databases have long been the poor cousin of the application tier when it comes to many of the processes we take for granted in the .NET world. Source control management, for example, is near ubiquitous for application files and there are several excellent VCS products which make versioning a breeze. Continuous integration is another practice which although not as common, is still frequently present in a robust application lifecycle. Of course the problem is that database objects don’t exist as...