[Rails] rails3 tutorial: testing with factories

I'm having trouble understanding what the assigns() method does, as
described at the following link:

http://ruby.railstutorial.org/chapters/modeling-and-viewing-users-two#sec:better_user_views

The User model has been 'rake db:test:prepare'ed, but I checked and no
records were
copied to the test db after doing that. Yet the description of
assigns() says that the
code:

describe "GET 'show'" do

before(:each) do
@user = Factory(:user)
end

.
.
.

it "should find the right user" do
get :show, :id => @user
assigns(:user).should == @user
end
end
.
.
.
end

'then verifies that the variable retrieved from the database in the
action [where the action looks like this:

class UsersController < ApplicationController

def show
@user = User.find(params[:id])
end

corresponds to the @user instance created by Factory Girl. I don't
know where the 'variable retrieved from the database' comes from??

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