I often struggle with the idea of deploying applications in productive, dev and test environments (not unit testing, I mean like a sandbox) when it comes to databases.
And no, source control is not an option. Three main reasons: 1) I don't necessarily want developers to look at sensitive information (like passwords, credit cards, etc.), 2) databases get big, too big for a DVCS like git or Mercurial, 3) I want to keep traceability between code and database dumps.
Lately I have been using Artifactory, and I have found it quite useful in several workflows. Artifactory is an artifact/dependency repository, which is different from a version control repository in that it is meant for managing large files/assets, and can be used with dependency management tools.
It crossed my mind that —instead of hoarding database backups in a file server where I cannot quite track such files in a way that they are supposed to go together (i.e. configuration management)— I could very well use Artifactory (or any other build artifact / dependency management set of tools) and simplify deployment automation while avoiding the quagmire of setting up a backup management solution.
So, is this concept/use case ill-conceived?, or is this actually done in practice? (because I could not find this being done anywhere)
