DbSetup, from Ninja Squad

XML sucks. Java rules.

Most database testing tools use XML, YAML or SQL files to define test data sets. And those approaches have several drawbacks:

Java developers are good at Java. Java IDEs are good at Java. Why use another language if Java can do it?
XML datasets have lots of repetitions. Each row of a table repeats the name of all the columns of the table.
XML is not a programming language. You can't easily factor out some common parts or parameterize a data set. You can't use tests or loops.
XML doesn't allow you to use constants or enums that are defined in your Java code. It doesn't allow you to name a specific ID. It doesn't have any other type than string.
XML files are hard to navigate. You can't have your data set defined in the test itself. With DbSetup, data sets are in the test class itself, or one control-click away from the test class.

DbSetup lets you define data sets in Java, in a very intuitive and non-verbose way. Compare the following data sets:

XML syntax

<dataset>
    <PERSON ID="1" FIRST_NAME="John" LAST_NAME="Doe" 
            BIRTH_DATE="1975-05-06" VERSION="0"/>
    <PERSON ID="2" FIRST_NAME="Mark" LAST_NAME="Smith" 
            BIRTH_DATE="1980-07-03" VERSION="0"/>
    <PERSON ID="3" FIRST_NAME="Claire" LAST_NAME="Connell" 
            BIRTH_DATE="1981-09-17" VERSION="0"/>
</dataset>

DbSetup syntax

Insert.into("PERSON")
      .withDefaultValue("VERSION", 0)
      .columns("ID", "FIRST_NAME", "LAST_NAME", "BIRTH_DATE")
      .values(1, "John", "Doe", "1975-05-06")
      .values(2, "Mark", "Smith", "1980-07-03")
      .values(3, "Claire", "Connell", "1981-09-17")
      .build();

You're in control

DbSetup doesn't try to do everything for you and to guess which tables should be deleted based on what has been inserted, and in which order. You're not limited to deletes and inserts. If you have some cyclic dependencies in your data set, you can use an update statement, or even disable constraints, wherever you want during the setup, using a SqlOperation.

Defining your own operations is easy.

Since everything is done and defined in Java, inserting a complex piece of data, or a large number of rows, or a piece of binary data that can't be written easily in XML, is not a problem.

Reusing a common part of a setup, parameterize it, is as simple as defining and calling a Java method.

DbSetup is fast

Most of the database operations in an application, especially when you use an ORM, are read-only operations. A typical repository contains many find() methods that you want to test, and very few create() or save(). Instead of re-populating the database before each test, even though the previous one used the same data set and was read-only, DbSetup allows populating the database only if it needs to be populated. By using a DbSetupTracker, and adding a single line of code in your read-only tests, you can avoid lots of unnecessary database repopulations, making your tests run much faster, and still leaving test methods independent.

DbSetup is extremely simple