DB Replica for local development

[kshitij10496]

Here is my 2-fold proposal for sharing DB for local testing and development:

Exporting Production DB to a Dump

• DB Admin/Maintainer creates a backup of the DB from Heroku Dashboard.
• Update the dump in the repo using the naming format hercules_backup_YYYYMMDD.dump.
• The DB is available for everyone to import and dig aka directly open-sourced.

Importing Dump Locally

• The prospective contributor creates a PostgreSQL database: $ createdb hercules_testdb
• Import the dump using pg_restore: $ pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner -h locahost -u $USER -d hercules_testdb path/to/dump

Considerations:

• More read operations than write operations. Moreover, the write operations (inserting and updating) are comparatively infrequent given the fact that the database is mostly updated once a semester.

This is the simplest and the minimalist solution to the problem I could come up with. I have unapologetically prioritised ease of setup and involvement from beginner developers (KGP community centric) over other factors such as maintainance, contraptions of 3rd party cloud services.

Basically, I considered the points raised by @icyflame in the discussions and incorporated my personal trade-off choices while coming up with the solution. References:

1. Importing and Exporting Heroku Postgres Databases
2. How To Backup PostgreSQL Databases on an Ubuntu VPS

Resolves #8

cc @icyflame @thealphadollar @themousepotato @Ayushk4

[icyflame]

@kshitij10496 Looks good. This is a good way to make it easier for developers to contribute to hercules!

[kshitij10496]

@icyflame Thanks for the support! ❤️

Being a pragmatist, I would request you guys to set up the database locally using the above method and share your feedback. This should help us evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed solution in practice. I plan on wrapping this up over the weekend and writing the Development Workflow. 😄

[thealphadollar]

LgTM too, :+1: I think this should be merged ASAP. I would also suggest adding the steps explained in the PR to the readme file.

[kshitij10496]

Thanks @thealphadollar for the nod!

I would also suggest adding the steps explained in the PR to the readme file.

Sure. I will add this to the Development Workflow wiki and link it in the README. 😃

To rephrase what I said above, I would be more comfortable to merge this is if somebody can successfully import the DB using the steps I've outlined and report back here.

[kshitij10496]

I will be merging this in as soon as I get 2 review approvals or 24 hours pass, whichever happens, the earliest. 😄

[thealphadollar]

Adding the below instruction link would be usefulf to anyone trying to restoring the DB.

https://www.godaddy.com/garage/how-to-install-postgresql-on-ubuntu-14-04/

@kshitij10496 , correction in the restoration command: pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner -h localhost -U postgres -d hercules_testdb path/to/dump