Test-Driven Database Development: Unlocking Agility

Chapter 6. Defining Behaviors

One of the things that some people find tricky about test-driving a database design is getting their head around what its behavior actually is. A lot of people tend to think of a database as a thing that is acted upon, rather than a thing that acts. Frankly, much of the time in which someone actually thinks about how a database should behave, they are giving it the wrong behaviors, like adding business rules to a database.

Databases are actually containers for knowledge. They absorb information, store it as knowledge, and then later emit information based upon requests for the knowledge they hold. The ways that a database translates between knowledge and information are its behaviors. Even when you define something ...