Working with the database that powers your application can become a task in itself. Luckily, CakePHP provides a set of tools to easily handle your database schema and migrations.
In this chapter, we'll look at how simple it is to build and maintain your database while keeping your schema changes up to date with your code base.
Note
Note that even if you use the schema and migrations plugin tool, you should take regular and automated backups of your live databases and store the backups on another host to avoid any loss in case of a server crash. The tools described in this chapter will help you save the changes you perform on your database schema, but you'll need to provide additional backup and recovery procedures, just in case of any issues.