DB Cleaner

A proof-of-concept database cleaner based on https://github.com/DatabaseCleaner/database_cleaner.

The CleanDatabase function reads the information catalog schema from SQL Server and filters down to tables only, excluding views.

It iterates through each result and runs the DELETE FROM command on each table.

Takeaways

This assumes full access to the database. It does not disable integrity constraints. This in turn would disallow unsorted tables from getting deleted without first disabling constraints using NO CHECK.

A faster way to execute this could be to either use the "transaction" strategy, which is to run the entire test suite within a single database transaction or to TRUNCATE instead of deleting.

Finally, the cleaner reveals an interesting factor about the speed of Go development in general. A Ruby on Rails developer expects a lot of magic in exchange for speed. In Go, a tool like this could easily turn milliseconds-long tests into 4 or 5 second test runs. Sometimes that trade-off is worth it, but other times tests can be refactored instead.

Getting started

Download Go, connect to a database, and make run.