View content of H2 or HSQLDB in-memory database

You can run H2 web server within your application that will access the same in-memory database. You can also access the H2 running in server mode using any generic JDBC client like SquirrelSQL.

UPDATE:

Server webServer = Server.createWebServer("-web,-webAllowOthers,true,-webPort,8082").start();
Server server = Server.createTcpServer("-tcp,-tcpAllowOthers,true,-tcpPort,9092").start();

Now you can connect to your database via jdbc:h2:mem:foo_db URL within the same process or browse the foo_db database using localhost:8082. Remember to close both servers. See also: H2 database in memory mode cannot be accessed by Console.

You can also use Spring:

<bean id="h2Server" class="org.h2.tools.Server" factory-method="createTcpServer" init-method="start" destroy-method="stop" depends-on="h2WebServer">
    <constructor-arg value="-tcp,-tcpAllowOthers,true,-tcpPort,9092"/>
</bean>
<bean id="h2WebServer" class="org.h2.tools.Server" factory-method="createWebServer" init-method="start" destroy-method="stop">
    <constructor-arg value="-web,-webAllowOthers,true,-webPort,8082"/>
</bean>

<bean id="dataSource" class="com.mchange.v2.c3p0.ComboPooledDataSource" destroy-method="close" depends-on="h2Server">
    <property name="driverClass" value="org.h2.Driver"/>
    <property name="jdbcUrl" value="jdbc:h2:mem:foo_db"/>
</bean>

BTW you should only depend on assertions and not on manual peeking the database contents. Use this only for troubleshooting.

N.B. if you use Spring test framework you won't see changes made by a running transaction and this transaction will be rolled back immediately after the test.

For H2, you can start a web server within your code during a debugging session if you have a database connection object. You could add this line to your code, or as a 'watch expression' (dynamically):

org.h2.tools.Server.startWebServer(conn);

The server tool will start a web browser locally that allows you to access the database.