[development] Active databases and development/test/production environment (was: ASP integration with Drupal?)

[J-P Stacey]

Tao Starbow wrote:
> This is one of the cooler, not-so-well known drupal features.  In 
> settings.php you can define $db_url as an array
> $db_url['default'] = normal drupal string
> $db_url['backoffice'] = other mysql connect string
> 
> then you use db_set_active( db_key ) to switch between them as needed.

Is this a standard core feature, enabled by default? I feel like saying "why 
wasn't I told about this before?" :)

One of the big problems we have is that many developers working on a given 
codebase: this means the codebase is in subversion and people check it out 
to their own machines, work on it, check changes back in.

Some developers develop on the same machine, because their desktops are 
WinXX and setting up LAMP stacks takes time. On this machine, whilst they 
can check out site-specific codebases to e.g. 
sites/developername-clientname-devel.example.com and hence develop in their 
own sandboxes, it's difficult to keep the site under revision and yet not 
have people be forced to share a database by settings.php .

But with the above a high-priority module could switch quickly and cleanly 
between developers' own sandboxed databases: does that sound right? How 
would you sneak in before any of the other modules? Would the following at 
the end of settings.php be sufficient:

	db_set_active($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']); // defaults to 'default'

Or is that too hacky? Can you even call a function from within settings.php 
(notwithstanding the argument of "would you want to?")

Somewhere among all this is functionality to make Drupal a good deal more 
"enterprise", for whatever that hackneyed term is worth. Transparently 
distributed development for large-scale, independent CMS teams on their 
clients' behalf.

Cheers,
J-P
-- 
J-P Stacey
+44 (0)1608 811870
http://torchbox.com