[support] WAS Why .. now 3 ways to save the db which is best

[Roman Zimmermann]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:10:14 +0100
Andy Heath <andyheathoss at axelrod.plus.com> wrote:

> On 13/07/2011 19:25, Metzler, David wrote:
> > Every DB export will be different.  There are even session
> > variables in the DB, so it's not like you can use it to track
> > changes.   What difference does it make which backup methodology
> > you choose as long as you've tested the restore?  I assume that's
> > what you're using it for, since it really doesn't make sense from
> > the version control perspective.
> 
> This is very useful, thankyou David - no I hadn't realised this - the 
> point about session variables puts it all in perspective for me.
> 
> So if I *did* want to use it from a version control perspective I'd
> need to be able to extract the content in some non-permeable form …

It is still possible to use database dumps to do some sort of version
control for the database. The "ever changing" data is located only in
some tables. Most of them are caches or session tables that can be
truncated without further consequences. So you can make a dump of the
database that excludes the data (=rows) from certain tables. This dump
will be (nearly) constant as long as the configuration doesn't change
and no content is added.

"drush sql-dump --ordered-dump" together with a good list of
structure-tables would do the trick - with one exception that is
mentioned here: http://drupal.org/node/1132238

roman