Synchronizing Live And Development Databases

General Installation & Upgrade
1

Just completed setting up a development site (thanks to everyone's help) but now trying to find best practices/suggestions for synchronizing the live site and development site databases. Tried experimenting with the following work flows but have had problems due to some errors (stack overflow and SQL errors which I'm working thru) so haven't been able to fully test and to see what operations append versus replace/update.

1. In Administration panel use the Backup function to backup the Live database and then import into the Development database with the Restore function.

2. Using PHPMYADMIN delete the Development database and then copy Live database to create new Development database.

3. Using PHPMYADMIN copy data only from the Live database to the Development database.

Where I'm a bit confused is how to best deal with any schema/table structure changes may occur with a software update. Since I won't be moving data from the Development database to the Live database, how do you implement any schema/table structure in the Live database?

Any suggestions or guidance would be appreciated.

Mark

2

Is anyone doing any synching between live and development databases?

3

Mysqldump | mysql from a shell

4

Thanks for the info. Will this work if the Development database is a newer software version than the Live database? According to CS-Cart you can't move data between databases of different software versions so if I complete a software update on the Development site not sure how to keep data in Live database (which has not been updated and is older software version) while updating database structure to newest software version. Last piece of the development site setup puzzle that I'm trying to figure out since I would prefer not to do my software updates to a live store even if it's temporarily closed.

5

You needto use store_import on the new site to sync it from your old. Then you do development and a final "acutalization" step and your new site will be synch'd with your old. You then rename your folders to your new site ends up in public_html.

6

Thanks, I'll take a look. I'm using Multi-Vendor so don't see a store import feature but will see what I can find.

Mark