Manage Data During the Development Lifecycle
Visual Builder provides tools to help you migrate data between your databases and to import and export data.
When developing your application you might have three versions of your application, each in a different status: development, staging, live. Each version uses an independent database that is used for that phase of development, and during the development lifecycle you need to manage the data that is stored in each database. To populate your databases you can add data manually, migrate data between the development, staging and live databases, or import data from files. See Export the Data to a File from the Data Manager and Import Data From a File Using the Data Manager.
Note:
If you want to access data in an existing database, see how you can bring your own schema when working with business objects.Each database uses a schema to describe the fields of the business objects. In the development phase, the schema of your development database is modified as you modify the business objects in the application. The development database schema replaces the schema of the staging database when you stage the application, and the staging database schema replaces the schema of the live database when you publish the application.
Note:
You cannot use the Data Manager to manage the data for business objects for external services. The definitions for business objects provided by external services are stored in your database schema, but the data from the service is not stored in your database.The following table describes the data typically stored in the database for each phase of the development lifecycle and the data management tasks performed during the phase.
| Phase | Description |
|---|---|
| Development |
Your development database will typically only contain some basic data to help you while you build your pages. To check the behavior of the application, you might add some sample data manually by using the forms you created in your application or by editing the data in the Data tab. You will typically perform the following tasks with the data in your development database:
|
| Staging |
Your staging database will typically contain a set of data that is as realistic as possible to be used when testing the staged version of the application. You can add data manually using your application’s user interface or import data from a file or database. When you are ready to publish your application, if the database schema has changed since the previous version, you will want to import the data from the live database into your staging database. This data is then copied to the live database when you publish the application. You will typically perform the following tasks in your staging database:
|
| Live |
Usually you will not want to modify the data in your live database except as part of the publishing process if the data is copied from the staging database. If it is necessary to modify your data because you changed the structure of your application, it is important to make and test the changes on your staging database before you publish the application. During this stage you will typically perform the following tasks:
|