> You can write a seperate function that handles database query, then call this function in your code under test You can, but that still requires that you mock

> You can write a seperate function that handles database query, then call this function in your code under test You can, but that still requires that you mock that call in order to test the method that calls your database query method. But, if you make it such that your method takes the result of the database query as a parameter, then you can test your method without having to use a mock. In other words, you can change this (which requires mocking get_db_result to test): def a_method_to_test(param1, param2): db_result = get_db_result(param1) # do something with db_result to this: def a_method_to_test(param1, param2, db_result) # do something with db_result Now you can test a_method_to_test without having to mock out the call to get_db_result by just passing in whatever you want as the db_result parameter. Basically, doing this will separate code that manipulates data from code that either writes or reads data. You can unit test methods that manipulate data, but you will need to do functional/integration testing of code that writes or reads data from other sources.