Database backup / saving discussions selectivly

orangeguru

Aloha!

Here is another one of my insane ideas / suggestions.

I regard wep applications in same ways similar to desktop applications: data gets created, edited and saved somewhere.

So far most web apps allow you only to save your stuff in one big database dump. As a webmaster I find of annoying to handle big dumps which contain EVERYTHING. Sure you can selectivly save / edit myPHPadmin. But that isn't very comfy, is it?

Here are my suggestions:

core

I would be great to be able either to save everything in one database OR tell vanilla to use different databases (like for certain topics).

This would have several benefits:

• easier selection: as a webmaster I can selectivly save threads and restore them. Of course you would need a function to switch all topics / posting offline for that board. But that would also be a nice way to organize big board with a lot old and unused stuff: lets say you organize your board/databases into years. So you can easily switch off very old content and save it.

• load distribution: for very big boards it's handy to spread the work over several database servers.

plugin

Another way to approach the 'save' function is to have a plugin that can do the following things:

• extract certain topics from the database, save them and delete them finally from the board.

• of course you also need a selective restore function as well: restore saved threads/discussions again.

• auto backup: some webmasters NEVER make any backups, when they get hacked usually all is lost. Would be nice to have either a backup reminder build in or an automatic backup (on FTP or send via eMail) in certain intervalls. I think such a function/plugin should be standard in any secure and well behaved web application.

Thanks for reading.

lech

I think your first approach could be beneficial to those who are maybe limited to a single database or table set (IE: renaming the LUM_ prefix and defining it in an advanced setup). Also it could be helpful for linking one user/role database table-set to more than one board. All you would need to do then is on each of the seperate boards define a strict set of role categories. For your plugin idea, most of these features exist in the Cleanup extension. However since I am one of those people with semi-screwed php permissions (that and I hardly make DB backups), I don't exactly have the luxury of using it to it's fullest. I have created a nice php CLI script which invokes sql dump which can probably be set to a crontab which will likely need to run as it's own setup apart from vanilla. I've already emailed mark the brilliantly insane idea but I don't think he's had time to read the 2 pages of idea that's there. Essentially (while not safely) I've so far been able to clone the DB, however the only area where I encountered a problem was when it recreated my roles which I had to recode from scratch. Overall pretty painless and totally flawless if you're good around a CLI.