[tlug] Non destructive update of MySQL database

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

TLUG,

I've asked this a couple of times on the MySQL mailing list, but have 
gotten very little in the way of helpful advice or explanation. So I'm 
hoping you guys might be a little more conversive on the matter.

I've got a local MySQL databases that I'm actively developing, which 
means I'm adding to the structure relatively often.

I also have some web sites that are using the same database structure. 
When I change the structure on my local database, I want that change to 
also be done on my web site databases. Only the structure needs to be 
altered. No data needs to be copied or synchronized.

So it's pretty easy to dump out the database structure:

mysqldump -u "root" -p"password" databaseName --no-data 
--result-file=db_backup.sql

But when it comes to importing the structure into the databases on the 
web servers, I can't find a way to do that.

All I need to do is have new tables and columns added to the existing 
database structure. Columns or tables deleted in the "source" database 
don't need to be deleted in the web databases.

Is there a way to do this? Compare one database to another and then have 
new tables and columns added in?

--
Dave M G
Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft
Kernel 2.6.20-5-generic
Pentium D Dual Core Processor
PHP 5, MySQL 5, Apache 2