[development] Solving the dev->staging->live problem

[Zohar Stolar]

Yuval Hager wrote:

> On Saturday 09 August 2008, Adrian Rossouw wrote:
>   
>> On 09 Aug 2008, at 4:09 PM, Zohar Stolar wrote:
>>     
>>> As yhager proposed, having two DBs instead of one, may ease things a
>>> lot.
>>> One DB will hold content: nodes, revisions, files, users...
>>> The second DB will hold configuration: views, cck structure,
>>> modules, variables... (this list is highly debatable).
>>>       
>> Prefixing would work just as well for this.
>>
>> I was thinking of adding properties to the table definition in schema,
>> myself. IE: content / configuration.
>>     
>
> I wish it was that simple. I'm afraid this is not to be solved on the database 
> level alone. Some rows in the variable table might count for content, others 
> for configuration. CCK, aka the-other-part-of-core, would be a impossible to 
> dissect based on post-mortem DB analysis. The menu system can be argued 
> about, etc.
>
>   
CCK is configuration of the content, not the content itself. Probably a 
separation is possible in CCK's tables.
Menus are content, but the position of their blocks is configuration.
Views are configuration, their results are obviously content.

A rule of the thumb could be: "If I change X, will it change any content?".
If the answer is 'yes', then X is content. Otherwise it's configuration.