title: Cucumber & test data management for non-Ruby apps
body: <p>I'm testing an app that's basically a message-handling application - a message comes in, it's content is analysed, then it's sent somewhere else for processing.  The app isn't built in Ruby.</p>
  
  <p>As you might imagine, the main testing approah consists of generating a whole bunch of different types of (quite complex) messages, loading them into the app, waiting a few seconds then ensuring that they get sent to the correct place.</p>
  
  <p>Functionally, the testing's going well, but I've currently got all of the test messages &amp; desired message destinations defined in Ruby code - I'd like to move them to either a YAML file, or (second choice) a database.  I'd prefer to use a YAML file over a database because it's easier to version control, and for non-technical testers to edit the message content directly.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a "recommended" way to implement this sort of data management in Cucumber?  It sort of smells like a fixtures approach makes sense, but fixtures to me have always involved populating a database from a file and then using the DB for testing, and I'm not 100% sure this is the best/simplest fit for this particular problem.</p>