dbUnit data types

Question

I'm using dBUnit and am trying to assert a row of my pre-defined FlatXmlDataSet with the actual DB dataset. The problem is the getValue for my Verification Code field returns a string when that data originates from the FlatXmlDataSet and as an Integer when its from the actual live database. This is true with any data type that isn't a String. I could write something to convert everything to a string before compare but is there a better way?

My code:

 IDataSet initialSet = setupDBWithData("test.xml", true);
 ITable initialTable = initialSet.getTable("USER");

 String response = doTestSendVerificationPin();
 assertOKResponse(response);

 ITable userTable = _databaseTester.getConnection().createTable("USER");

 // Make sure old user row is left unchanged
 assertRowsEqual(initialTable, 0, userTable, 0);

... (further down)

protected void assertRowsEqual(ITable expected, int rowExpected, ITable actual, int rowActual) throws Exception
{
 ITableMetaData metaData = expected.getTableMetaData();
 Column [] cols = metaData.getColumns();

 for (int i = 0; i < cols.length; i++)
 {
  String colName = cols[i].getColumnName();
  assertEquals(expected.getValue(rowExpected, colName), actual.getValue(rowActual, colName));
 }

}

This the test.xml that I slurp in:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE dataset SYSTEM "../Tests/testdata/common/some.dtd"> 

<dataset>
  <USER ID="132" FIRST_NAME="Joe" LAST_NAME="Bob" VERIFICATION_CODE="1869" />
</dataset>

Answer 1

Sorry if this doesn't answer your question exactly, but this seems to me to be a sort of unusual way to use DBUnit. Usually you use DBUnit to load data into the DB and then use SQL to query the database and compare that with some other known result. I haven't seen anyone try to compare the DBUnit IDataSet as part of an assertion - I don't think DBUnit is intended to be used this way.