The standard data seed

Many business software systems are essentially some permanent data stores combined with a frontend. The data has to come from somewhere, such as an API that calls a database. For our purposes, the backend could be anything. It might be within our control (a database of our customers) or outside our control. For example, TweetDeck is a tool that helps people view and plan their X.com posts. (Formerly known as Twitter). The tool was originally created by an independent software company. The data for that tool is data from X.com.

Now think about trying to test the tool. You’d want to log in as a certain user, search for certain things, and confirm they show up on the user interface – but that is reliant on X having the right data. Terms such as 3 days ago would slowly age out; you wouldn’t be able to confirm them. If someone else was using the same account, they might corrupt the data and give you different search results.

Enter the standard...