I've found that replacing the database with in memory SQLite for tests is a sweet spot. Almost as fast as a mock, catches a lot of database issues. And it's really easy to do if you're using something like Django that makes automatically generating database migrations easy.
It won't help you with database specific differences. But there should be very few of those if you're using a framework that abstracts away the database. Like Django.
It won't help you with database specific differences. But there should be very few of those if you're using a framework that abstracts away the database. Like Django.