In this article, we are going to learn the basics of SQL unit testing and how to write a SQL unit test through the tSQLt framework.

This is the second part of a conceptual article for data professionals and enthusiasts interested to work on a test-driven data warehouse development concept by using tSQLt an industry recognized SQL unit testing framework.

This is a conceptual article consisting of two parts with enough supported material for any data professional or enthusiast with databases or data warehouse development background willing to go a step ahead by using an industry-recognized SQL unit testing framework called tSQLt.

This article talks about basic concepts of SQL unit testing from a Data Warehouse point of view using tSQLt, a highly productive and acclaimed SQL unit testing framework.

This article gives hands-on experience of writing basic utility procedures and creating their SQL unit tests using tSQLt an advanced SQL unit testing framework.

This article talks about the three standard SQL unit tests which can be written against any stored procedure ultimately becoming SQL unit testing object to meet internal or external business specification.

This article is focussed on clever database object naming from both development and SQL unit testing point of view.

This article also highlights the importance of naming database objects going through different development transitions including the SQL unit testing phase due to the agile nature of requirements.

This SQL unit testing article is based on the fact that we often learn from the mistakes so the idea is to highlight the mistakes to understand them clearly so that they can be avoided straight away.

This article talks about core concepts of test-driven database development followed by creating simple SQL unit tests with tSQLt based on this approach.

tSQLt is a powerful, open source framework for SQL Server unit testing. In this article, we will mainly focus on how to create and run SQL unit testing with help of the tSQLt framework. Before we begin to learn tSQLt framework details, let’s discuss essentials and importance of the database unit testing approach, in general. SQL unit testing is a vital and inseparable part of the modern database development approach and it makes possible to prevent errors before producing the release deployment process. Some database developers are still discussing the needs of the SQL unit testing concept; however, database unit testing is very significant to control and check the behavior of the individual parts of the database. For this reason, we cannot ignore the need to write unit test cases.

This article is an overview of tSQLt, which is one of the best SQL unit testing frameworks, due to number of reasons, including the ease of writing unit tests in the same language (T-SQL) in which the database objects themselves are written.

SQL unit testing is rising in popularity amongst database developers. The importance of Code Quality in Software Development has increased over the period of time. Everyone wants to follow coding standards and write clean code. However, to timely deliver a product to Business we end up in violating design principles, writing fewer unit tests, increasing code complexity and breaching best practices. This increases the overall Technical Debt of the application and has the potential to halt future development work by creating unplanned work.