Most database-driven sites that are developed with unplanned XP are a pain to unit test. Every time you add model elements, the database sample data needs to be updated to go with the changes in the model. This gets to be such a pain that (speaking for myself) I never do it. And without that deterministic sample data that the unit tests can run against, there isn't any way to know if your code is doing what you expect.
Enter a synthetic database module for Dentaku. This module reads the metadata about the generated model and creates code that will automagically create code that returns synthetic records populated with data that you can test against. In other words, you have fields with predictable values and relations with predictable counts.
It's not quite finished yet though, it turns out I broke Hibernate the other day when I put this in. But I should have that fixed soon. It would be great if we had Continuum running, that way I could get slapped every time I broke the build. Hopefully, that's ready to go soon.
