Maintaining a site with both dev and live environments

[Joe Simper]

We've built several AbleCommerce sites with development environments which we then copy over to a production environment. The two environments do not share a database. This is fine for the initial launch, but we've come across some difficulties when trying to add content and products later.

When a client requests new content or help with adding or editing products, we'll make the changes first in our development environment. We have the client review the changes and approve, then we'll move it to the production environment. Pretty standard stuff, I think. However, the catch is that all of the content and products are stored within the database, and we haven't found an easy way to copy that information to the production database. We end up doing the work twice, once in development and then again in production.

So, my question. Is there some tool or process out there that would allow us to easily transfer the new data to the production database? It would be best if it was automated, but at this point, just about anything is better than manually recreating the information.

[jmestep]

You could use Able's dataport to export move the products. I just can't remember if you can set it to retain the same productid- I don't think you can in an Able 7 to 7, like you can in Able 5 to 7.

[WylieE]

We use SQL Data Examiner to push db changes from our development server to live site. It is also great for finding db discrepancies between development and live sites.

http://www.sqlaccessories.com/SQL_Data_Examiner/

A single user license is only $200 which is nothing compared to the time it saves. Two BIG thumbs up from me.