TDD for data integration?

I use TDD for building apps and love it. However, I also use Ruby and Rails for data integration projects that do not have screens. Currently, I write a primary method that has all the steps and make each work as I build the data integration routine. There aren’t any tests for these but I do write the result of the overall routine (success or error), any error messages or failed tasks, along with counts of what changed in the database.

I’m wondering if a TDD approach using rspec or anything else for building similar data integration routines would be beneficial. I’m struggling a bit with how it would apply since there aren’t any screens involved.

An example data integration project might be: pickup data from files in ftp, pickup data from api, merge the data, perform statistics, save results to db.

Any thoughts are appreciated

I wouldn’t say that TDD is tied to having screens at all.

I TDD non-UI code all the time (models in Rails apps, command-line tools, data mungers).

Ok, I think I will jump in and see what I can do.