Database design snapshots

gistfile1.txt

Designers need fleshed out pages to do properly design a screen.
In the past, we've loaded test fixtures in development to give them that.
But test fixtures are not a good fit for this.
They're designed to make testing easy, not designing.

What we need instead is a way for a designer to create a dataset
that'll work great for design and then save that as a snapshot.
This snapshot can be named and reloaded as often as desired.
I envision it'll work like this:

1) Designer starts with a clean database (although possibly preloaded with db/seeds.rb)
2) He creates all the data using the app itself.
3) He runs rake db:snapshots:capture NAME=jfbase that'll create db/snapshots/201105110953-jfbase.(rb/yml/sql/whatever)
3a) If no name is given, it'll create db/snapshots/201105110953.(rb/yml/sql/whatever) [timestamp]

This snapshot will record all the data in the tables at the time.
It'll also record the schema version of the database of the time of the dump.

When he wants to load the snapshot, he'll do

1) db:snapshots:load NAME=jfbase
1a) If no name is given, it'll load the latest snapshot
2) If the database is not empty, it'll ask for confirmation before overwriting everything:
"This database is not empty. Are you sure you want to erase it to load the snapshot? [y/n]"
You should be able to sidestep this using "--force-load".

If the schema version doesn't match the current database, it'll load the old schema,
then run the migrations needed to bring it up to date,
then save it again (so this dance isn't needed next time).