Test harness: data connections

1. I'm on a new team. Cool.
2. It's just me. Boo.
3. I convinced them to get contractors. Yay!
4. The contractors need test/mock data. Um...
5. I don't have any. :'(

I'm going to have them work on a couple of OWIN projects. We're going to use SpecFlow for BDD. Between the OWIN test server and nDumbster, I've almost got a complete test harness. Once it's complete, I can have the contractors work inside the harness. The major missing piece is data connections.

Like-able solutions I must (or want to) rule out:

• Delphix's Dynamic Data Platform
  • Pro: My boss is already looking to get this.
  • Pro: Solves the problem (or so they say).
  • Con: We don't have it, and we won't have it soon enough.
• Microsoft Fakes
  • Pro: Can shim out the relevant dependencies.
  • Con: Requires at least VS Enterprise; we only have VS Professional.
  • ???: Shims might be evil?
• Make a test database manually
  • Pro: Should be a surefire solution.
  • Con: Lots of effort to set up.
  • Con: Golden data requires maintenance.

Is there a better solution than making the test data myself?

My criterion for rating a solution includes:

• Price: preferably free.
• Time to implement: acquiring licenses and overhead stuff like that.
• Usability: documentation, community, examples, what have you.