Does anyone know of a tool for setting up a database for QA? And then resetting it?

Question

Here is what I am looking for. I would love to have a tool that can be used to populate a database, allow us to do some interactive testing, and then reset the database to where it was before we started using it. Kind of like a DB fixture for unit testing, but for a user to use instead of an automated test suite. Does something like this exist?

This would be for MySQL. We use php/mysql as our main platform.

Thanks!

Answer 1

GenerateData.com might be useful.

Ever needed custom formatted sample / test data, like, bad? Well, that's the idea of the Data Generator. It's a free, open source script written in JavaScript, PHP and MySQL that lets you quickly generate large volumes of custom data in a variety of formats for use in testing software, populating databases, and scoring with girls.

To revert the data to its original version, you could follow Marcus Adams' advice and use backup and restore.

One of the benefits of using a tool like this is that you aren't using real data, so you don't have to worry about security and confidentiality of the data you're using in QA.