Controlling the Data of a Database Docker Container

Question

I'm new to Docker and containers in general, and was wondering if:

1. this approach is possible, and
2. are there better/more-proven approaches

I have a "Command Central" web app that's responsible for maintaining the data for multiple teams. The teams will each work with their own containers, which come in pairs; one web app and one database.

I'd ideally like to, from the "Command Central" web app, generate the data that a given Database container will use. Should it be as simple as an export of the data from the "Command Central" app?

Answer 1

There are two approaches. One copies the data into a db engine container, where it is run in the containers private file system. This is a simple approach, and works fine for short-lived dev instances, but data is lost when each container is deleted. The second approach is to mount the data to the db container. Either approach will require each teams data be provided as a set of db files.