Using app upgrade I have set up a dev/prod ...

[Pim_Sauter]

Using app upgrade

I have set up a dev/prod environment for my app:

The development app, connected to a development database The production app, connected to the production database

If I make some changes to the development app, can I use ‘App upgrade’ to propagate these changes to the production app? I am a bit unclear as to how this feature works, and could not find any in depth documentation for it. The changes to the databases are done independently with a database migration tool.

[RezaRaoofi]

App Upgrade keeps the original app’s url, but replaces the whole app definition, so all users will see the new version on their next sync; that means in your case the upgraded prod app will be connected to the dev app’s database, so I believe once your dev app is final, you need to temporarily re-connect its tables to the prod database right before upgrading; this way after upgrading, prod app will have the right database.

I also found this article that will explain more details: App Upgrades | AppSheet Help Center

[tatiya]

RezaRaoofi:

you need to temporarily re-connect its tables to the prod database right before upgrading

I didnt understand this statement “you need to temporarily re-connect its tables to the prod database right before upgrading”. Can someone elaborate? The Prod app will have more latest data which might get lost in migrating the dev app. How do you take care of this?

[JuneCorpuz]

Hi. Whatever is the database in the dev app will be carried into the prod app so after upgrading it, you have to reconnect the prod database in the prod app

[Steve]

When using App Upgrade, the target of the upgrade (e.g., prod) gets an exact copy of the configuration of the source app (e.g., devel). While doing development and testing with the devel copy, the devel copy will (typically) be configured to use development data sources, not production data sources. When you perform the app upgrade, prod will end up using whatever data sources devel was configured to use.

To use App Upgrade, first reconfigure the devel copy to use prod data sources, then perform the app upgrade, then reconfigure devel to use devel data sources again. This way, the upgraded prod will always have prod data sources.

[Kaajal_Maharaj]

Thanks Steve for your suggestion above.  Is there a practical "How to" example to demonstrate how this is achieved?  Do we have to manually keep track of the structural database changes (from my Google Spreadsheet on DEV) and then manually apply these to the PROD database?  Is there a simple way in which we can get the PROD database to accept all the structural (for example new columns or new tables) changes from the DEV database while still keeping the PROD data?