I'm working on a program that manipulates and stores a lot of data in  
a database via ActiveRecord. I'm having a heck of a time trying to  
write unit and functional tests for this program because I don't have  
a reasonable way to reload the test db. I'd like to use the fixtures  
facility from Rails but so far I've failed at ripping it out and  
moving it to a non-Rails environment.

(BTW, I'm using the MockFS gem to test the filesystem portions of the  
code and I have to say it is working *brilliantly*. Many thanks to  
the author!)

Anyone have experience with this type of work? Care to share any tips  
on getting this to work?

Thanks very much.

cr