TL;DR: Putting it all together, the full code can be found here: https://gist.github.com/1420255 Intro Pyramid's documentation doesn't cover the preferred way to test with SQLAlchemy, because Pyramid tries to stay out of your way and allow you to make your own decisions. However, I feel i'ts necessary to document what I think is the best way to test. When I first started writing tests with SQLAlch