title: Unit testing a select query
body: <p>I am returning a set of rows, each representing a desktop machine.</p>
  
  <p>I am stumped on finding a way to unit test this. There's not really any edge cases or criteria I can think of, to test. It's not like share prices where I might want to check I am getting data which is indeed 5 months old. It's not like storing person details where you could check that a certain length always works, or special characters, etc. Or currency and different currencies (£, $, etc) as strings.</p>
  
  <p>How would I test this sort of resultset?</p>
  
  <p>Also, in testing the returnset of a query, there are a few problems:</p>
  
  <p>1) Testing you have the same number of rows as when you run the query on the server is brittle because someone might change the table data. Is this when you have a test server, which nobody changes unless they upload change scripts?</p>
  
  <p>2) Do you test the dataset object is not null? So if it's instantiated as null, but is not after the query's executed, it's holding value (this doesn't prove the data is correct, just that data has been retrieved).</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>