This is an issue nearly every developer faces. How do you merge in major back-end changes to a living and breathing site with lots of user-generated content?

There are many ways to approach this issue. This presentation will cover the patterns and practices I've used at Warner Bros. Records to tackle this problem for Drupal 5.x sites.

I have broken database syncing down into 2 major steps:

1. Shifting sequenced IDs - requires taking dev site down
2. Merging content - requires taking dev and prod sites down

Using shell scripts and reference files, it takes me about 1-2 hours to perform a complete DB sync on some of our largest artist sites. I'll present the exact steps in a watered-down live demo, showing how to programmatically apply ALL development changes to an existing site.