Not only can databases store stuff but the way people use them - or not - can be instructive.

The programmers on the latest project for example. They intend to just use the one.

So how are they going to test how their application behaves when it's misconfigured and there's 0 of the things they are expecting ? Or how the interface looks when there's many many items to be displayed ?

Does it behave correctly when there's just one option and the use doesn't have a choice to make ? How will they check their errors that are meant to appear when a user gets halfway along the path and finds they can't go any further as there's no data to populate the next screen ?

Or are they just intending to pass it over to the testers and tell them that it works fine when everything is happy happy ?

As part of my coding duties I'm still responsible for a program that configures a system. I had to make a small enhancement that meant adding two more fields to a table in the database and changing a dialog so it could read and write to these new fields

Made the program and passed it over to our 'tester'

Waited for him to ask me which database fields the enhancement used...

and waited...

No request for information arrived.

So I knew he wasn't looking in the database to see if the program was writing to the correct fields, he was just checking that the program was consistent with itself. If I'd made a mistake and was writing the Max value to the minimum field and the Min value to the maximum field then as long as I made the same mistake in reading the values then the program would appear to work.

Until the program that uses this data comes along and tries to use it...

I had a constructive afternoon writing a number of SQL scripts that would populate a database with one, two or many values. Mix the scripts up and I could have a large variety of differently configured systems very easily and be all set to test.

Now that is a sign that things are improving here - having control of the data we are testing with and not just using any old customer database that happens to be lying around and could be full of any old cr8p