Seed Management
Seed management is a software development practice focused on creating, maintaining, and using seed data—initial or sample data used to populate databases for development, testing, or demonstration purposes. It involves strategies for generating consistent, realistic data that mimics production environments while ensuring data integrity and reproducibility across different stages of the development lifecycle. This practice is crucial for enabling efficient testing, onboarding new team members, and maintaining application functionality without relying on live production data.
Developers should learn seed management when building applications that require consistent data for testing, such as e-commerce platforms, SaaS products, or any system with complex data relationships. It's particularly valuable in agile development environments where frequent database resets are needed, during CI/CD pipeline setup to ensure tests run with predictable data, and for creating realistic demo environments for stakeholders. Proper seed management reduces bugs caused by inconsistent data and accelerates development cycles by eliminating manual data entry.