Title: Database Tables for Export
Last modified: May 25, 2022

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# Database Tables for Export

 *  Resolved [jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/)
 * (@jreese78254)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/)
 * I am working in sort of an unusual development/production environment, and I 
   am concerned that when we push our content that it will overwrite calendar events.
   Let me explain our scenario.
 * We use Pantheon’s development environment to publish a Knowledge Base. This includes
   a development, testing, and live environment. We do all of the content creation
   in development and then push upstream to the Live environment. Now with the Events
   Calendar, I believe those events will be created in the Live environment. How
   do we avoid overwriting the events in Live with content being pushed from Dev?
   For example, let’s say we have a July event that has been updated in Live. We
   push content from Dev to Live, and we go to look at the events to verify that
   they are correct. Will the data be lost…overwritten? If the event didn’t exist
   in Dev would that prevent the Live environment from being changed.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

 *  Plugin Support [WilloftheD](https://wordpress.org/support/users/abzlevelup/)
 * (@abzlevelup)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15691081)
 * Hi [@jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/),
 * Thanks for reaching out to us. Appreciate you providing more information about
   what you’re trying to accomplish here.
 * First, we advise against this strategy as there would be private and draft posts(
   ntm other post types, not events) — there might be conflicts in the long run.
   However, if there is no content updated on the production website, and your dev
   site contains the very latest event content, then it should be fine.
 * On the other hand, if there are events updated from the production website, but
   the rest of the content is on the dev site, then it might cause a problem.
 * We advise reconsidering your process or make sure that events are also updated
   on the dev site, or find a way to exclude event related posts and taxonomies 
   from the database you’re pushing from the dev site.
 * Let me know if this helps, or if you do have more questions.
 * Best,
    Abz
 *  Thread Starter [jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/)
 * (@jreese78254)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15695646)
 * What we would like to do is just keep maintaining the Events Calendar on our 
   Live site and not update the Dev content at all. The main reason is that we are
   using Dev for content development for the release, and the Events Calendar content
   will not track against the release, but rather a training schedule independent
   of any release.
 * We shouldn’t be doing any updates in Dev for this as all, so I was hoping if 
   the entries on the Live site had a greater timestamp (later date) than what is
   in Dev, then we would be okay.
 *  Thread Starter [jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/)
 * (@jreese78254)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15695662)
 * Also, if you know what tables we should possibly look at exporting on the Live
   site, shouldn’t this protect us from issues. We discovered that our hosting site’s
   push upstream doesn’t allow us to push just certain content. It is an all or 
   nothing system. This is why to preserve our Live users versus our Dev users, 
   we have to export the user tables and user metadata.
 *  Plugin Support [iammarta](https://wordpress.org/support/users/iammarta/)
 * (@iammarta)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15700631)
 * Hi [@jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/) ,
 * Our events are a WordPress custom post type so all the data that you would need
   for each individual event can be found in the posts and postmeta tables of your
   database.
 * Just to be completely safe we recommend that you make a backup of your site before
   making any changes.
 * Best regards,
    Marta
 *  Thread Starter [jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/)
 * (@jreese78254)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15700652)
 * How about if we export all posts and events, do our push, and then reimport the
   posts and events? It seems like the Events XML file has the content that is found
   in our events, so I am hoping that would preserve the content so we could then
   reimport after each push.
 *  Plugin Support [WilloftheD](https://wordpress.org/support/users/abzlevelup/)
 * (@abzlevelup)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15701226)
 * Hi [@jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/), that could
   be a solution. One way to know is to test it out. Please keep a working backup
   of your websites, both staging and live site. I would also suggest that you could
   create another temp live site to test.
 * Moreover, I would check with our team if there are any issues with what you’re
   trying to do here. I’d get back to you when I know more.
 * Have a great day.
 * Best,
    Abz
 *  Thread Starter [jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/)
 * (@jreese78254)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15703260)
 * What seems to happen with import and export is that we can export what is showing
   as “Events”, but when we reimport, it does a merge not an overwrite.
 * If we knew what tables to export using SQL Workbench, we are already having to
   export the user data so we can keep separate user sets.
 *  Thread Starter [jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/)
 * (@jreese78254)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15703264)
 * We ended up with duplicate events when the import was finished.
 *  Plugin Contributor [András Guseo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/aguseo/)
 * (@aguseo)
 * [4 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15706317)
 * Hi [@jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/)
 * The generic process you described – keeping the events on production and pushing
   other content from staging – will not work reliably.
 * Also exporting, then reimporting events will not work well either, as you have
   already experienced.
 * The reason is how WordPress handles post data. All posts, including custom post
   types like events, venues, organizers, WooCommerce products, etc., are stored
   in the wp_posts table and their respective metadata in the wp_postmeta table.
   
   The two are linked together by the post ID.
 * When you push data from staging, you mentioned you cannot do a partial push. 
   So all of your wp_posts table will be overwritten, and you will lose the events.
 * When doing export-import, what can happen is that you export the events and the
   relevant data, including the venues and organizers. These as well are all connected
   by the post ID of the event.
    When you reimport an event, it is not guaranteed
   that it will get the same post ID as it had before. If it gets a new one – which
   is very likely – then the connection between the event and the organizers and
   venues will break.
 * If you want to stick to pushing releases from staging to production, you need
   to include events and basically all data as well if you want it to work well.
 * Hope this helps.
    Cheers, Andras
 *  Plugin Support [WilloftheD](https://wordpress.org/support/users/abzlevelup/)
 * (@abzlevelup)
 * [3 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15759322)
 * Hey [@jreese78254](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jreese78254/), this thread
   has been inactive for a while, so we’re going to go ahead and mark it Resolved.
   Please feel free to open a new thread if any other questions come up, and we’d
   be happy to help.
 * Cheers,
    Abz

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

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## Tags

 * [database](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/database/)
 * [export](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/export/)
 * [push](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/push/)

 * 10 replies
 * 4 participants
 * Last reply from: [WilloftheD](https://wordpress.org/support/users/abzlevelup/)
 * Last activity: [3 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-tables-for-export/#post-15759322)
 * Status: resolved