01 What is Database Testing?
Why testers verify the data layer directly instead of trusting the UI or API to report it accurately, and where database testing fits relative to manual, API, and automation testing.
02 Relational Database Fundamentals
Tables, rows, columns, primary and foreign keys, and relationships — the vocabulary a tester needs to reason about data, not database design theory.
03 SQL for Testers
SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY, JOIN, GROUP BY, and aggregate functions taught as a verification tool for QA — confirming what a feature actually did to the data, not general SQL literacy.
04 CRUD Validation
A systematic framework for verifying Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations at the data layer — the right row changed, the right row didn't, and nothing else moved.
05 Constraints, Keys, and Relationships
Testing that NOT NULL, UNIQUE, and foreign-key constraints are actually enforced — applying Boundary Value Analysis and Equivalence Partitioning to constraint boundaries instead of UI fields.
06 Data Integrity and Consistency
What 'the data is correct' actually means across a multi-table operation — consistency after a partial failure, and the difference between a UI bug and a data bug.
07 Stored Procedures, Views, and Triggers
Testing business logic that lives inside the database itself — what a tester verifies about a stored procedure's output, a view's projection, and a trigger's side effect.
08 Transactions, Locks, and Concurrency
ACID properties from a tester's perspective — recognizing a lost update, a dirty read, or a deadlock symptom — and what concurrent-access defects actually look like in a bug report.
09 Database Defect Investigation
A systematic trace from a wrong UI value back through the API response, the query, and the row or transaction that actually caused it.
10 Database Performance Testing
Recognizing a slow query and index awareness at a level a tester can use to file a precise performance defect — not database administration or query-plan tuning.
11 Database Security Testing
Access-control testing at the data layer, SQL injection symptom recognition, and sensitive-data-at-rest awareness — identification and reporting, not exploit construction.
12 Backup, Recovery, and Audit Validation
What a tester verifies about backup integrity, recovery correctness, and audit-log completeness — directly relevant to a compliance-heavy domain like AtlasBank's.
13 Applying Database Testing: AtlasBank Validation
Combining SQL verification, constraint testing, concurrency, and audit validation from Sections 1-4 against a realistic, integrated AtlasBank loan disbursement and repayment feature.
14 Applying Database Testing: AtlasShop Validation
Applying this path's full toolkit against AtlasShop, a contrasting e-commerce schema — inventory contention, constraint boundaries, and N+1 performance in a genuinely unfamiliar data model.
15 Common Mistakes in Database Testing
Six data-layer mistake patterns spanning SQL verification, constraints, concurrency, triggers, and performance/security — each traced back to a real defect earlier in this path.
16 Capstone: End-to-End Database Verification
The complete database-testing lifecycle applied to AtlasBank's International Money Transfer feature — tracing the same compliance-aggregation defect three prior paths found to its exact data-layer root cause, plus one new, database-only defect.
Section 1 — Review
A recap of Database Foundations — what database testing is, relational vocabulary, and the core SQL verification toolkit — plus a Knowledge Check.
Section 1 — Solutions
Answers and reasoning for Section 1's Knowledge Check — applying COUNT, SUM, IS NULL, JOIN, and EXISTS to five realistic database verification scenarios.
Section 2 — Review
A recap of Data Validation — CRUD validation, constraints and keys, and cross-row consistency — plus a Knowledge Check.
Section 2 — Solutions
Answers and reasoning for Section 2's Knowledge Check — applying CRUD validation, constraint testing, and cross-row consistency checks to five realistic scenarios.
Section 3 — Review
A recap of Advanced Database Testing — stored procedures, views, and triggers; transactions and concurrency; and systematic defect investigation — plus a Knowledge Check.
Section 3 — Solutions
Answers and reasoning for Section 3's Knowledge Check — applying stored procedure, trigger, concurrency, and defect-investigation techniques to five realistic scenarios.
Section 4 — Review
A recap of Performance and Security — query scaling and index awareness, least privilege and injection symptoms, and backup/recovery/audit validation — plus a Knowledge Check.
Section 4 — Solutions
Answers and reasoning for Section 4's Knowledge Check — applying performance scaling, least privilege, injection recognition, and backup validation to five realistic scenarios.