Question

I have a development system and a production system. Now If i make changes in my development schema like new tables.. change in table structures etc. take dump and re import on the production schema..then the previous production schema would be cleanly over written or what would be the outcome? i dont want to take risk with this one thats why asking from the experts here.
(i use imp/exp)

thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you import a dump into a database it either fails (because the tables/views/indexes/constraints are already there) or (depending on your imp options) it overwrites the existing tables and existing data – so don’t do it.

Using exp/imp to synchronize a schema is not possible

You should use a proper script management (i.e. having incremental SQL scripts to migrate a schema from version x to x+1) rather than relying on all changes applied correctly to a development database.

Those scripts have to be stored in a version control system such as svn or git.

Some schema versioning systems you might want to look at are

• Liquibase
• Flyway