A lot of existing databases are storage first, with everything else built around them. I have been exploring what it looks like if the database is closer to the application runtime itself, where state is live, queryable, and easier to reason about directly.

One thing I am prototyping right now is database-native tests.

Basically: what if integration tests were a database primitive?

CREATE TEST test::insert { INSERT test::users [{ id: 99, name: "Ghost" }]; FROM test::users | FILTER id == 99 | ASSERT { name == "Ghost" }; };

So not a wrapper, not a framework, not an external test runner.

A real test object inside the database.

The idea is that you could run these before schema changes, and make stored procedures or other database logic much easier to test without leaving the database model.

Still early, but it feels like one of those things that should just exist, especially for databases built around live application state.