What's the correct way to deal with databases in Git? - database

I am hosting a website on Heroku, and using an SQLite database with it.
The problem is that I want to be able to pull the database from the repository (mostly for backups), but whenever I commit & push changes to the repository, the database should never be altered. This is because the database on my local computer will probably have completely different (and irrelevant) data in it; it's a test database.
What's the best way to go about this? I have tried adding my database to the .gitignore file, but that results in the database being unversioned completely, disabling me to pull it when I need to.


While git (just like most other version control systems) supports tracking binary files like databases, it only does it best for text files. In other words, you should never use version control system to track constantly changing binary database files (unless they are created once and almost never change).
One popular method to still track databases in git is to track text database dumps. For example, SQLite database could be dumped into *.sql file using sqlite3 utility (subcommand .dump). However, even when using dumps, it is only appropriate to track template databases which do not change very often, and create binary database from such dumps using scripts as part of standard deployment.


you could add a pre-commit hook to your local repository, that will unstage any files that you don't want to push.
e.g. add the following to .git/hooks/pre-commit
git reset ./file/to/database.db
when working on your code (potentially modifying your database) you will at some point end up:
$ git status --porcelain
M file/to/database.db
M src/foo.cc
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "fixing BUG in foo.cc"
M file/to/database.db
.
[master 12345] fixing BUG in foo.cc
1 file changed, 1 deletion(-)
$ git status --porcelain
M file/to/database.db
so you can never accidentally commit changes made to your database.db


Is it the schema of your database you're interested in versioning? But making sure you don't version the data within it?
I'd exclude your database from git (using the .gitignore file).
If you're using an ORM and migrations (e.g. Active Record) then your schema is already tracked in your code and can be recreated.
However if you're not then you may want to take a copy of your database, then save out the create statements and version them.
Heroku don't recommend using SQLite in production, and to use their Postgres system instead. That lets you do many tasks to the remote DB.
If you want to pull the live database from Heroku the instructions for Postgres backups might be helpful.
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/pgbackups
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-import-export

Related

use rpm -V against backed-up database

rpm(1) provides a -V option to verify installed files against the installation database, which can be used to detect modified or missing files.
This might be used as a form of intrusion detection (or at least part of an audit). However, it is of course possible that the rpm database installed may be modified by a hacker to hide their tracks (see http://www.sans.org/security-resources/idfaq/rpm.php, last sentence)
It looks like it should be possible to back up the rpm database /var/lib/rpm after every install (to some external medium) and to use that during an audit using --dbpath. Such a backup would have to be updated fo course after every install or upgrade etc.
Is this feasible? Are there any resources that detail methods, pitfalls, suggestions etc for this?

Yes feasible. Use "rpm -Va --dbpath /some/where/else" to point to
some saved database directory.
Copy /var/lib/rpm/Packages to the saved /some/where/else directory,
and run "rpm --rebuilddb --dbpath /some/where/else" to regenerate
the indices.
Note that you can also verify files using the original packaging
like "rpm -Vp some*.rpm" which is often less hassle (and more
secure with RO offline media storing packages) than saving copies
of the installed /var/lib/rpm/Packages rpmdb.

What's the best way to set up Git staging and production environments with separate databases?

I have 2 branches in Git - staging and production. They are deployed to the same VPS where there is one production database and a separate staging database. This allows us to stage new features without affecting the production environment. Then, when we're ready, we replicate the database changes from staging to production.
What is the best way to set this up so that the staging branch has separate database credentials to production? At the moment, the database creds are stored in a single file. I've been thinking about using gitignore to ignore this file in both branches and edit it manually so that it remains different on each branch. Is this the best thing to do or is there a better way?

We use a cascading approach:
Default settings are in a common "config" file.
For each stage of development, it has its own configuration file, for example we have a config_prod and a config_dev.
Each stage runs as a different (system) user, and for that user we set an environment variable PROJ_SETTINGS and point it to the file that we need to load.
The code then read the defaults, and then overrides them with whatever is available from the resource pointed to by the environment variable (if it exists).
Setting of this variable is taken care of by our normal devops/automation scripts. We have a few advantages:
Keeps all configuration under version control.
Easy to switch settings without modifying the source.

Yes gitignoring the database.yml file is an approach I've used in a few organizations.
We usually keep a database.yml.sample in source control so make it easier. Users just copy that to database.yml and modify as appropriate.

I'm using a mongodb with a custom folder for saving data but that data is not synced with github because the files doesnt change

I use github to version my files and I would like to version my database too, in this case is only for testing purposes.
But the database files created by mongodb are not changed, the files change data is weeks ago :s therefore the github has old data..
I can't really understand why if I'm changing some data in the database the mongodb doesn't save to a file... or at least the file must have changed somehow..

MongoDB preallocates datafiles , which then get gradually filled. Perhaps that is why changes are not properly picked up.
As an aside, of all the possible ways of versioning a MongoDB database, I'm not sure that keeping the datadir itself in a Git repository is the best way to go.
Alternatives: running mongodump will result in a BSON-dump of your database or collection, while running mongoexport will result in a JSON or CSV. Both can be read back in with mongorestore and mongoimport, see documentation.
These dumps can then be versioned using you favourite tool. Personally, when using Git, I would version the JSON dump, e.g.
mongoexport --db mydatabase --collection mycollection > mycollection.json
will result in a JSON file, containing the contents of the chosen collection (you can dump the entire database if you want).
Something extra, if you append --csv and --fields fieldname1,fieldname2, you can dump a nice CSV-file, to read in with another program.

Empty my Sqlite3 database in RoR

I am working on a Ruby on Rails 3 web application using sqlite3. I have been testing my application on-the-fly creating and destroying things in the Database, sometimes through the new and edit actions and sometimes through the Rails console.
I am interested in emptying my Database totally and having only the empty tables left. How can I achieve this? I am working with a team so I am interested in two answers:
1) How do I empty the Database only by me?
2) How can I (if possible empty) it by the others (some of which are not using sqlite3 but MySql)? (we are all working on an the same project through a SVN repository)

To reset your database, you can run:
rake db:schema:load
Which will recreate your database from your schema.rb file (maintained by your migrations). This will additionally protect you from migrations that may later fail due to code changes.
Your dev database should be distinct to your environment - if you need certain data, add it to your seed.rb file. Don't share a dev database, as you'll quickly get into situations where other changes make your version incompatible.

Download sqlitebrower here http://sqlitebrowser.org/
Install it, run it, click open database (top left) to locationOfYourRailsApp/db/development.sqlite3
Then switch to Browse data tab, there you can delete or add data.

I found that by deleting the deployment.sqlite3 file from the db folder and inserting the command rake db:migrate in the command line, it solves the problem for all of my team working on sqlite3.

As far as I know there is no USER GRANT management in sqlite so it is difficult to control access.
You only can protect the database by file access.
If you want to use an empty database for test purpose.
Generate it once and copy the file somewhere.
and use a copy of this file just before testing.

How can I put a database under git (version control)?

I'm doing a web app, and I need to make a branch for some major changes, the thing is, these changes require changes to the database schema, so I'd like to put the entire database under git as well.
How do I do that? is there a specific folder that I can keep under a git repository? How do I know which one? How can I be sure that I'm putting the right folder?
I need to be sure, because these changes are not backward compatible; I can't afford to screw up.
The database in my case is PostgreSQL
Edit:
Someone suggested taking backups and putting the backup file under version control instead of the database. To be honest, I find that really hard to swallow.
There has to be a better way.
Update:
OK, so there' no better way, but I'm still not quite convinced, so I will change the question a bit:
I'd like to put the entire database under version control, what database engine can I use so that I can put the actual database under version control instead of its dump?
Would sqlite be git-friendly?
Since this is only the development environment, I can choose whatever database I want.
Edit2:
What I really want is not to track my development history, but to be able to switch from my "new radical changes" branch to the "current stable branch" and be able for instance to fix some bugs/issues, etc, with the current stable branch. Such that when I switch branches, the database auto-magically becomes compatible with the branch I'm currently on.
I don't really care much about the actual data.

Take a database dump, and version control that instead. This way it is a flat text file.
Personally I suggest that you keep both a data dump, and a schema dump. This way using diff it becomes fairly easy to see what changed in the schema from revision to revision.
If you are making big changes, you should have a secondary database that you make the new schema changes to and not touch the old one since as you said you are making a branch.

I'm starting to think of a really simple solution, don't know why I didn't think of it before!!
Duplicate the database, (both the schema and the data).
In the branch for the new-major-changes, simply change the project configuration to use the new duplicate database.
This way I can switch branches without worrying about database schema changes.
EDIT:
By duplicate, I mean create another database with a different name (like my_db_2); not doing a dump or anything like that.

Use something like LiquiBase this lets you keep revision control of your Liquibase files. you can tag changes for production only, and have lb keep your DB up to date for either production or development, (or whatever scheme you want).

Irmin (branching + time travel)
Flur.ee (immutable + time travel + graph query)
XTDB (formerly called 'CruxDB') (time travel + query)
TerminusDB (immutable + branching + time travel + Graph Query!)
DoltDB (branching + time-travel + SQL query)
Quadrable (branching + remote state verification)
EdgeDB (no real time travel, but migrations derived by the compiler after schema changes)
Migra (diffing for Postgres schemas/data. Auto-generate migration scripts, auto-sync db state)
ImmuDB (immutable + time-travel)

I've come across this question, as I've got a similar problem, where something approximating a DB based Directory structure, stores 'files', and I need git to manage it. It's distributed, across a cloud, using replication, hence it's access point will be via MySQL.
The gist of the above answers, seem to similarly suggest an alternative solution to the problem asked, which kind of misses the point, of using Git to manage something in a Database, so I'll attempt to answer that question.
Git is a system, which in essence stores a database of deltas (differences), which can be reassembled, in order, to reproduce a context. The normal usage of git assumes that context is a filesystem, and those deltas are diff's in that file system, but really all git is, is a hierarchical database of deltas (hierarchical, because in most cases each delta is a commit with at least 1 parents, arranged in a tree).
As long as you can generate a delta, in theory, git can store it. The problem is normally git expects the context, on which it's generating delta's to be a file system, and similarly, when you checkout a point in the git hierarchy, it expects to generate a filesystem.
If you want to manage change, in a database, you have 2 discrete problems, and I would address them separately (if I were you). The first is schema, the second is data (although in your question, you state data isn't something you're concerned about). A problem I had in the past, was a Dev and Prod database, where Dev could take incremental changes to the schema, and those changes had to be documented in CVS, and propogated to live, along with additions to one of several 'static' tables. We did that by having a 3rd database, called Cruise, which contained only the static data. At any point the schema from Dev and Cruise could be compared, and we had a script to take the diff of those 2 files and produce an SQL file containing ALTER statements, to apply it. Similarly any new data, could be distilled to an SQL file containing INSERT commands. As long as fields and tables are only added, and never deleted, the process could automate generating the SQL statements to apply the delta.
The mechanism by which git generates deltas is diff and the mechanism by which it combines 1 or more deltas with a file, is called merge. If you can come up with a method for diffing and merging from a different context, git should work, but as has been discussed you may prefer a tool that does that for you. My first thought towards solving that is this https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Configuration#External-Merge-and-Diff-Tools which details how to replace git's internal diff and merge tool. I'll update this answer, as I come up with a better solution to the problem, but in my case I expect to only have to manage data changes, in-so-far-as a DB based filestore may change, so my solution may not be exactly what you need.

There is a great project called Migrations under Doctrine that built just for this purpose.
Its still in alpha state and built for php.
http://docs.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-migrations/en/latest/index.html

Take a look at RedGate SQL Source Control.
http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-source-control/
This tool is a SQL Server Management Studio snap-in which will allow you to place your database under Source Control with Git.
It's a bit pricey at $495 per user, but there is a 28 day free trial available.
NOTE
I am not affiliated with RedGate in any way whatsoever.

I've released a tool for sqlite that does what you're asking for. It uses a custom diff driver leveraging the sqlite projects tool 'sqldiff', UUIDs as primary keys, and leaves off the sqlite rowid. It is still in alpha so feedback is appreciated.
Postgres and mysql are trickier, as the binary data is kept in multiple files and may not even be valid if you were able to snapshot it.
https://github.com/cannadayr/git-sqlite

I want to make something similar, add my database changes to my version control system.
I am going to follow the ideas in this post from Vladimir Khorikov "Database versioning best practices". In summary i will
store both its schema and the reference data in a source control system.
for every modification we will create a separate SQL script with the changes
In case it helps!

You can't do it without atomicity, and you can't get atomicity without either using pg_dump or a snapshotting filesystem.
My postgres instance is on zfs, which I snapshot occasionally. It's approximately instant and consistent.

I think X-Istence is on the right track, but there are a few more improvements you can make to this strategy. First, use:
$pg_dump --schema ...
to dump the tables, sequences, etc and place this file under version control. You'll use this to separate the compatibility changes between your branches.
Next, perform a data dump for the set of tables that contain configuration required for your application to operate (should probably skip user data, etc), like form defaults and other data non-user modifiable data. You can do this selectively by using:
$pg_dump --table=.. <or> --exclude-table=..
This is a good idea because the repo can get really clunky when your database gets to 100Mb+ when doing a full data dump. A better idea is to back up a more minimal set of data that you require to test your app. If your default data is very large though, this may still cause problems though.
If you absolutely need to place full backups in the repo, consider doing it in a branch outside of your source tree. An external backup system with some reference to the matching svn rev is likely best for this though.
Also, I suggest using text format dumps over binary for revision purposes (for the schema at least) since these are easier to diff. You can always compress these to save space prior to checking in.
Finally, have a look at the postgres backup documentation if you haven't already. The way you're commenting on backing up 'the database' rather than a dump makes me wonder if you're thinking of file system based backups (see section 23.2 for caveats).

What you want, in spirit, is perhaps something like Post Facto, which stores versions of a database in a database. Check this presentation.
The project apparently never really went anywhere, so it probably won't help you immediately, but it's an interesting concept. I fear that doing this properly would be very difficult, because even version 1 would have to get all the details right in order to have people trust their work to it.

This question is pretty much answered but I would like to complement X-Istence's and Dana the Sane's answer with a small suggestion.
If you need revision control with some degree of granularity, say daily, you could couple the text dump of both the tables and the schema with a tool like rdiff-backup which does incremental backups. The advantage is that instead of storing snapshots of daily backups, you simply store the differences from the previous day.
With this you have both the advantage of revision control and you don't waste too much space.
In any case, using git directly on big flat files which change very frequently is not a good solution. If your database becomes too big, git will start to have some problems managing the files.

Here is what i am trying to do in my projects:
separate data and schema and default data.
The database configuration is stored in configuration file that is not under version control (.gitignore)
The database defaults (for setting up new Projects) is a simple SQL file under version control.
For the database schema create a database schema dump under the version control.
The most common way is to have update scripts that contains SQL Statements, (ALTER Table.. or UPDATE). You also need to have a place in your database where you save the current version of you schema)
Take a look at other big open source database projects (piwik,or your favorite cms system), they all use updatescripts (1.sql,2.sql,3.sh,4.php.5.sql)
But this a very time intensive job, you have to create, and test the updatescripts and you need to run a common updatescript that compares the version and run all necessary update scripts.
So theoretically (and thats what i am looking for) you could
dumped the the database schema after each change (manually, conjob, git hooks (maybe before commit))
(and only in some very special cases create updatescripts)
After that in your common updatescript (run the normal updatescripts, for the special cases) and then compare the schemas (the dump and current database) and then automatically generate the nessesary ALTER Statements. There some tools that can do this already, but haven't found yet a good one.

What I do in my personal projects is, I store my whole database to dropbox and then point MAMP, WAMP workflow to use it right from there.. That way database is always up-to-date where ever I need to do some developing. But that's just for dev! Live sites is using own server for that off course! :)

Storing each level of database changes under git versioning control is like pushing your entire database with each commit and restoring your entire database with each pull.
If your database is so prone to crucial changes and you cannot afford to loose them, you can just update your pre_commit and post_merge hooks.
I did the same with one of my projects and you can find the directions here.

That's how I do it:
Since your have free choise about DB type use a filebased DB like e.g. firebird.
Create a template DB which has the schema that fits your actual branch and store it in your repository.
When executing your application programmatically create a copy of your template DB, store it somewhere else and just work with that copy.
This way you can put your DB schema under version control without the data. And if you change your schema you just have to change the template DB

We used to run a social website, on a standard LAMP configuration. We had a Live server, Test server, and Development server, as well as the local developers machines. All were managed using GIT.
On each machine, we had the PHP files, but also the MySQL service, and a folder with Images that users would upload. The Live server grew to have some 100K (!) recurrent users, the dump was about 2GB (!), the Image folder was some 50GB (!). By the time that I left, our server was reaching the limit of its CPU, Ram, and most of all, the concurrent net connection limits (We even compiled our own version of network card driver to max out the server 'lol'). We could not (nor should you assume with your website) put 2GB of data and 50GB of images in GIT.
To manage all this under GIT easily, we would ignore the binary folders (the folders containing the Images) by inserting these folder paths into .gitignore. We also had a folder called SQL outside the Apache documentroot path. In that SQL folder, we would put our SQL files from the developers in incremental numberings (001.florianm.sql, 001.johns.sql, 002.florianm.sql, etc). These SQL files were managed by GIT as well. The first sql file would indeed contain a large set of DB schema. We don't add user-data in GIT (eg the records of the users table, or the comments table), but data like configs or topology or other site specific data, was maintained in the sql files (and hence by GIT). Mostly its the developers (who know the code best) that determine what and what is not maintained by GIT with regards to SQL schema and data.
When it got to a release, the administrator logs in onto the dev server, merges the live branch with all developers and needed branches on the dev machine to an update branch, and pushed it to the test server. On the test server, he checks if the updating process for the Live server is still valid, and in quick succession, points all traffic in Apache to a placeholder site, creates a DB dump, points the working directory from 'live' to 'update', executes all new sql files into mysql, and repoints the traffic back to the correct site. When all stakeholders agreed after reviewing the test server, the Administrator did the same thing from Test server to Live server. Afterwards, he merges the live branch on the production server, to the master branch accross all servers, and rebased all live branches. The developers were responsible themselves to rebase their branches, but they generally know what they are doing.
If there were problems on the test server, eg. the merges had too many conflicts, then the code was reverted (pointing the working branch back to 'live') and the sql files were never executed. The moment that the sql files were executed, this was considered as a non-reversible action at the time. If the SQL files were not working properly, then the DB was restored using the Dump (and the developers told off, for providing ill-tested SQL files).
Today, we maintain both a sql-up and sql-down folder, with equivalent filenames, where the developers have to test that both the upgrading sql files, can be equally downgraded. This could ultimately be executed with a bash script, but its a good idea if human eyes kept monitoring the upgrade process.
It's not great, but its manageable. Hope this gives an insight into a real-life, practical, relatively high-availability site. Be it a bit outdated, but still followed.

Update Aug 26, 2019:
Netlify CMS is doing it with GitHub, an example implementation can be found here with all information on how they implemented it netlify-cms-backend-github

I say don't. Data can change at any given time. Instead you should only commit data models in your code, schema and table definitions (create database and create table statements) and sample data for unit tests. This is kinda the way that Laravel does it, committing database migrations and seeds.

I would recommend neXtep (Link removed - Domain was taken over by a NSFW-Website) for version controlling the database it has got a good set of documentation and forums that explains how to install and the errors encountered. I have tested it for postgreSQL 9.1 and 9.3, i was able to get it working for 9.1 but for 9.3 it doesn't seems to work.

Use a tool like iBatis Migrations (manual, short tutorial video) which allows you to version control the changes you make to a database throughout the lifecycle of a project, rather than the database itself.
This allows you to selectively apply individual changes to different environments, keep a changelog of which changes are in which environments, create scripts to apply changes A through N, rollback changes, etc.

I'd like to put the entire database under version control, what
database engine can I use so that I can put the actual database under
version control instead of its dump?
This is not database engine dependent. By Microsoft SQL Server there are lots of version controlling programs. I don't think that problem can be solved with git, you have to use a pgsql specific schema version control system. I don't know whether such a thing exists or not...

Use a version-controlled database, of which there are now several.
https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2021-09-17-database-version-control/
These products don't apply version control on top of another type of database -- they are their own database engines that support version control operations. So you need to migrate to them or start building on them in the first place.
I write one of them, DoltDB, which combines the interfaces of MySQL and Git. Check it out here:
https://github.com/dolthub/dolt

I wish it were simpler. Checking in the schema as a text file is a good start to capture the structure of the DB. For the content, however, I have not found a cleaner, better method for git than CSV files. One per table. The DB can then be edited on multiple branches and merges extremely well.

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