Unit testing has become in integral part of application development. Within a unit-testing framework, developers can create test cases that verify blocks of code in isolation from other code. For example, a developer might create a test case to check that a class method returns the results expected based on the prescribed input. The developer can run the test case as often as necessary to verify each modification to the code. If later the code needs to be updated, the developer can rerun the test case to check that nothing was broken during the update process, assuming the test case still applies.

By incorporating unit testing within their development processes, developers can help to ensure the viability of the many individual parts that make up an application. In the same way, unit testing can also be useful to SQL Server developers, particularly for catching issues in components such as stored procedures and user-defined functions. Yet the world of SQL Server development has been slow to embrace unit testing, mainly because most of the available tools made test case maintenance cumbersome and ineffective. In many cases, the data and schemas needed to perform the tests could not be relied on to sustain the long-term use of those tests.

But tSQLt has changed all that by providing a unit-testing framework that works seamlessly with all editions of SQL Server from 2005 (service pack 2) through 2012. The tSQLt framework lets you create isolated test cases that are defined with the data you need so you can perform your tests without being affected by outside changes unrelated to the test’s purpose. In addition, each test case runs in its own transaction, so you can keep the test independent of other processes and reduce the type of cleanup you often have to perform after manual testing, such as undoing data modifications. Plus, you can quickly set up tSQLt and start creating test cases as easily as you would a stored procedure while organizing your test cases within special schemas-test classes-that provide the structure needed to reference a specific test case or run multiple test cases.

In this article, I introduce you to tSQLt and provide the information you need to get started. I also demonstrate how to create several test cases that use many of the tSQLt features. If you want to try out the examples on your own system, you’ll need to set up a test environment, which in this case is the BikeShop database. The following T-SQL script creates the BikeShop database, adds the Bike table to the database, and then inserts sample data into the table:

Notice that the script also adds a check constraint to the table. The constraint ensures that all ReorderPoint values are greater than 10. I’ve included the constraint to help test one of the features in tSQLt. Later in the article, we’ll also add a function and a couple stored procedures to the database to try out other tSQLt functionality as well.

Setting Up the tSQLt Environment

Not surprisingly, your first step in getting started with tSQLt is to install it on your system. The T-SQL “platform” comprises a set up objects that you add to the database you want to test. As such, tSQLt is specific to the database on which it’s installed and remains isolated from other databases or the server as a whole. If you want to perform unit testing on a different database, you must set up tSQLt on that one as well.

The following steps describe how to set up tSQLt on a database (in this case, the BikeShop database we created above):

1.      Download tSQLt from SourceForge, and unzip the file.

2.      Ensure that the common language runtime (CLR) is enabled on the target database. You can use the following T-SQL to enable CLR on your database:

3.      Ensure that the TRUSTWORTHY database property is set to ON. You can use the following T-SQL to set the property on your database:

4.      Run the tSQLt.class.sql script against the database. The script is included in the zip file that you downloaded from SourceForge.

That’s all there is to setting up tSQLt on your database. If you then open Object Explorer in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), you’ll find that the BikeShop database now contains the tSQLt schema and, assigned to that schema, numerous tables, views, stored procedures, and user-defined functions, both table-valued and scalar. These are the components that do all the heavy lifting when you’re creating and running test cases against your database.

When you create a test case in tSQLt, you add it to a test class. That means, before you create a test case, you should first create the test class where the test case will be located. A test class is basically a schema configured with an extended property that tells tSQLt it is a test class. To create the test class, you use the NewTestClass stored procedure that’s part of the tSQLt schema. When you run the stored procedure, you must pass in a test class name as an argument, as shown in the following EXEC statement:

The EXEC statement creates a test class named TestBikeShop. Once we’ve completed this step, we can add one or more test cases to that test class, so let’s get started doing just that.

Testing the AddSalesTax Function

A test case is essentially a stored procedure that’s part of a test class and that uses tSQLt elements to perform the testing. Although database unit testing is often thought of in terms of running tests on stored procedures and functions, it can also be used to test such components as FOREIGN KEY constraints or WHERE clause filters. Even so, for this article we’ll focus on functions and stored procedures because they provide a good foundation for getting started with tSQLt.

The first example we’ll review creates a test case for a user-defined function. But first, we must add that function to the BikeShop database. The following T-SQL code creates the AddSalesTax function, which simply adds a 9.5% sales tax to a specified amount:

As you can see, this is a very simple, straightforward function. We might decide to use it in a computed column or view or in some other way. As with any user-defined function, we can create a tSQLt test case that ensures the accuracy of the function before we actually implement it.

To create a test case, we use the CREATE PROCEDURE statement. The procedure name must start with the word “test” and be created in an existing test class; otherwise, creating the test case is much like creating any other procedure. The following T-SQL script creates a test case named TestAddSalesTax in the TestBikeShop test class:

The part we’re most concerned about in this test case is in the main body of the procedure definition (between the BEGIN and the END keywords). First, we declare the @total variable with the MONEY data type to hold the value returned by the AddSalesTax function.

Next, we define a SELECT statement that calls the function and assigns its output to the @total variable. Notice that we pass in a value of 10 as the function argument.

What we’ve done so far is set up our test scenario. The next step is to run the test itself, and for that we use the tSQLt stored procedure AssertEquals. The procedure compares two values. If the values are equal, the test passes. Otherwise, the test fails.

For this test, we want to compare the expected results, 10.95, with the actual results returned by the function, as saved to the @total variable. We use an EXEC statement to run the AssertEquals procedure, passing in the two arguments.

That’s all there is to defining our test case. To run the test case, we use the EXEC statement to call the tSQLt Run stored procedure, and pass in as an argument the names of the test class and test case, separated by a period (TestBikeShop.TestAddSalesTax). Because the test passes in this case the Run stored procedure returns the following results:

Now suppose that we had expected different results from what we specified in the example above. For example, the sales tax might actually be 8.5%, so we would expect the function to return 10.85 rather than 10.95. As a result, we would specify 10.85 as the first argument to the AssertEquals stored procedure, as shown in the following example:

The only different between this example and the preceding one is the expected amount passed into the AssertEquals stored procedure. However, the original AddSalesTax function remains unchanged. Consequently, when we call the Run procedure, the test now fails, as shown in the following results:

As you can see, the tSQLt framework provides a quick and easy way to check a function’s viability, without impacting any other components or data in the database. And we can rerun the test as often as necessary. You probably noticed, however, that the function is independent of any database data. Although you can run the procedure within the context of a specific table value, you don’t have to, so test data in this case, is not much of a factor, other than having to provide a value to pass into the AddSalesTax function when we call it. But often test data is an important consideration, which you’ll see in our next example.

Testing the UpdateListPrice Stored Procedure

At times, you might want to test an operation-such as an update performed by a stored procedure-that relies on a specific set of data to return consistent results each time you perform your test. In such cases, you often need to maintain test data that can be “reset” to the original after each test. However, that is often easier said than done, especially in a shared test environment.

With tSQLt, reliable and consistent test data is not a problem because you can incorporate that data into your test case. To demonstrate how this works, we’ll add a stored procedure to the BikeShop database that updates the list price for a specific bike ID. The following CREATE PROCEDURE statement adds the UpdateListPrice stored procedure to the database:

As with the AddSalesTax function, we’ve created a very simple procedure. However, unlike the function, this procedure actually updates data in the Bike table. Of course, we wouldn’t want to test the procedure by running it against a production database, and even running it in a test environment can turn into a complex process if it means always ensuring that the test data is exactly what we need it to be when we run our tests and schema changes do not affect our test. For example, if you’re running this procedure against a test database used by multiple developers, another developer might add a constraint that affects your test, and a different developer might remove the data to test an insert operation. Even if you’re developing against your own test database, you must always ensure the reliability of the data and schema after each test. Any changes can impact your tests.

Fortunately, tSQLt provides a mechanism for building the schema structure (up to a certain point) and test data right into your test case, thus preventing unrelated outside changes from affecting that test case. By using the tSQLt FakeTable stored procedure, you can create a special temporary table with the same name as the table referenced within the stored procedure you’re testing. You can then populate the test table with data. Any subsequent references you then make in your test case to that table will always point to the test table and not the actual table in your database. Let’s look at an example to help understand how this works.

The following CREATE PROCEDURE statement creates a test case (TestUpdateListPrice) that uses the FakeTable stored procedure to create a temporary version of the Bike table:

Once again, let’s zoom in on the main body of the CREATE PROCEDURE statement. The first step we take is to use an EXEC statement to run the FakeTable stored procedure, passing in dbo.Bike as an argument. This creates our temporary table based on the structure of the Bike table. Any subsequent references to the Bike table within the test case automatically point to the temp table, not the real one.

Next, we use an INSERT statement to add test data into our temp table, as we would a regular table. Notice, however, that tSQLt lets us add only the data we need. In other words, our INSERT statement can specifically target certain columns. We do not have to populate every column, even if those columns in the actual table are configured as NOT NULL. In this case, we’re concerned only with the BikeID and ListPrice columns because those are the columns targeted by the UpdateListPrice stored procedure. This has the added benefit of keeping the test case immune to unrelated changes to the source table, such as the addition of a column.

After we insert data into our temp table, we execute the UpdateListPrice stored procedure, passing in a BikeID value (101) and a new ListPrice value (595.95) as the two arguments. Although the stored procedure targets the actual Bike table, tSQLt is smart enough to know to use the temp table, so any data modifications made by the stored procedure are against the data that we inserted into the temp table.

Our next step is to then retrieve the updated data from the temp table, after the stored procedure has run. First, we declare the @NewPrice variable to hold our updated ListPrice value, and then we use a SELECT statement to assign the new value to the variable.

Finally, as you saw in the previous examples, we again use the AssertEquals stored procedure to compare the expected price (595.95) to the updated value, as it is saved to the @NewPrice variable. That’s all we need to do to create our test case for the UpdateListPrice stored procedure. Again, we can run the test case by using the tSQLt Run stored procedure. Not surprisingly, the test case passes, as shown in the following results:

If the test case had failed, we would have seen results very similar to what we saw when our function test case failed. However, regardless of whether the test passes or fails, we’re able to run this test without impacting the actual table and without needing to maintain a special set of test data.

Testing the SetReorderPoint Stored Procedure

Now that you’ve had a sample of how you can work with tables and data in a test case, let’s look at another feature built into tSQLt-the ability to compare tables. First, we need to add a second stored procedure to the BikeShop database. The following T-SQL script creates the SetReorderPoint stored procedure, which updates all ReorderPoint values in the Bike table based on a specified percentage:

The procedure takes one argument, an integer, which is converted into a percentage and then multiplied against the existing ReorderPoint value. Now let’s look at how to create our test case. This time, we want to compare multiple rows of data against our expected results. In the following CREATE PROCEDURE statement, we again use the tSQLt FakeTable stored procedure to create a temporary table for testing:

After we create our temporary table, we insert several rows of data. However, because the stored procedure we’re testing targets only the ReorderPoint column, that’s the only column we need to populate. Next, we run the SetReorderPoint stored procedure, passing in the value 200 as an argument. That means the ReorderPoint values should all be multiplied by 200%, or doubled.

Our next step is to use a SELECT...INTO statement to create the #ActualValues temporary table and insert the values from our Bike temporary table into the #ActualValues temporary table. We have to create the #ActualValues temporary table so we can do an exact comparison with our expected results, which would be difficult to do directly with the Book temporary table because it contains other columns, even if they’re not populated.

Next, we create a second temporary table to hold our expected results. The temporary table, #ExpectedValues, includes only the ReorderPoint column. We then populate that column with the values that the SetReorderPoint stored procedure should generate.

Finally, we use the tSQLt AssertEqualsTable stored procedure to compare the data in the #ActualValues table to the data in the #ExpectedValues table. When we run the test case, it should evaluate to true and return the following results:

In this case, our actual values matched the projected values, so our test succeeded. However, suppose we populate the #ExpectedValues table with different values because we expect the SetReorderPoint stored procedure to add the 200, rather than multiplying the values by 200%. The following test case definition would look as follows:

The only difference in this example, compared to the preceding one, is that we updated the ReorderPoint values inserted into the #ExpectedValues temporary table. But this change is enough for our test to fail because the two tables are no longer equal. The test case now returns the following results:

Now let’s look at one other tSQLt feature. As you’ll recall, when we created the BikeShop database, we added a constraint to the table that restricted the values that can be inserted into the ReorderPoint column. However, the temporary tables you create with the FakeTable stored procedure, by default, don’t include the original constraints. One reason this can be useful is because changes to constraints on the table won’t impact your test cases.

However, we can override this behavior by using the ApplyConstraint stored procedure, which lets us apply individual constraints to our temporary table. The following example uses the ApplyConstraint procedure to enforce the ck_ReorderPoint_min check constraint defined on the Bike table:

Notice that when we specify the ApplyConstraint stored procedure, we pass in two arguments: the table and the constraint names. Yet even though we’ve included this procedure, our test will still succeed because we’re multiplying our ReorderPoint values by 200%, far above the check constraint’s minimum.

Now suppose we instead pass in a value of 10 when we call the SetReorderPoint stored procedure, as shown in the following example:

Not only have we changed the SetReorderPoint argument, but also the expected values we insert into the #ExpectedValues temporary table. Now when we run the test case, we receive neither a success or failure message; rather, we receive an error message, as shown in the following results:

As you can see, our test case has violated the check constraint. At this point, we can now modify our test case, or we can change the check constraint itself.

The Wonderful World of tSQLt

Unit testing is not for everyone, nor is it appropriate for every situation. You would not, for example, want to create unit tests for each column in every table to verify that the column is in the correct format. But in those circumstances in which you need to test a process in isolation from other components, without being impacted by constraints, unrelated schema modifications, or changing data, tSQLt could prove an invaluable tool, especially since it eliminates the need to manage special data sets for this sort of testing.

And what we’ve covered in this article should give you the start you need to dig deeper into the various features that tSQLt supports. And there are plenty. But you now have the basics, and those will allow you to go a long way with unit testing. You can, of course, use Red Gate’s SQL Test add-in to SSMS to make the process of unit testing during development as simple as possible. For integration testing, you can also integrate tSQLt with continuous integration tools such as TeamCity and CruiseControl. And because the tSQLt infrastructure and its test cases are added right to the database, you don’t have to implement a special strategy to manage script files or other components. Everything is right there where you need it, when you need it.