Setting up and maintaining a script with realistic seed data is unrewarding and tedious. But as a system grows it starts paying dividends.

• Testing and showing different use cases is a matter of seconds instead of filling in unrealistic dummy data that doesn’t cover edge cases.

• Acceptance tests can use it as starting point and no additional fixture or factory library is needed.

• A good seed script can be run multiple times to create increasing amounts of data. Capacity planning a system just got a whole lot easier.

Invest in a good seed script with realistic data that covers all different use cases of the system, it will pay off in the near future.