Integration tests, how to merge dev and production databases?

Question

Database

There is a web-project, and we are going to enter tests now. Since there were often problems on the part of the database, some data on the production broke the work, although everything was fine on the dev. And therefore, for a test server, you need to somehow combine data from the production and the structure (after all, it can change) from the development server. The option for each change in the structure by hand is to sort it all out - not really. Does anyone have any experience or ideas on how to fix this issue.

Answer 1

As an option: let's say you have developed a new functionality. During the development process, the structure of the database changed. And I want to test it on data from production. Database migrations can help with this (I personally can’t imagine development without them at all).
You take a database dump from the seller. Pour yourself. You roll the latest migrations onto it and get the base from production, but with a new structure. You can run tests on it.