> Simply because I consider "code" to be the part of the world I have any control over and "database" to be the dangerous and out-of-reach part where errors sho

> Simply because I consider "code" to be the part of the world I have any control over and "database" to be the dangerous and out-of-reach part where errors show up later Sounds more like a personal phobia than a substantive critique of databases, especially ACID databases. You can test any query outside of a huge integration test by… running the query in a smaller, more targeted test suite. This can be done for performance checks, conformance, sanity, etc. The thing is, compared to most other programming languages, SQL is largely side effect free. As long as no one is dropping tables or indexes, the query you ran today will return the same result structure you run tomorrow. Obviously changes in the volume of data will affect performance, but that's true no matter what data store you use. "But what about testing writes," you ask? Same deal. Start a transaction, run the INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE and then ROLLBACK. You get your performance timing, your ability to detect errors, and no permanent changes to your dataset. Data storage and persistence is hard. It doesn't become easier using NoSQL or avoiding data altogether. But if data makes you personally uncomfortable, perhaps it's best you keep your distance. It greatly limits your career choices, but that's ultimately your choice.