Automated integration testing is similar in many ways to unit testing with respect to the basic techniques that are used. You can use the same test runners and build system support. The primary difference with unit testing is that less mocking is involved.

Where a unit test would simply mock the data returned from a backend database, an integration test would use a real database for its tests. A database is a decent example of the kind of testing resources you need and what types of problems they could present.

Automated integration testing can be quite tricky, and you need to be careful with your choices.

If you are testing, say, a read-only middleware adapter, such as a SOAP adapter for a database, it might be possible to use a production database copy for your testing. You need the database contents to be predictable and repeatable; otherwise, it will be hard to write and run your tests.

The added value here is that we are using a production data copy. It might...