a practice about dev and prod environments

English is not my native language, please excuse me if I make mistakes.

prod: production, dev: development

I just began a new project in a new team and I am confused about a practice in our process.

Here is the context: we have a huge website using asp.net webforms and using a lot of tables. In the past, the manager came with the content to the developer and he inserted it manually into the production database.

They would like a tool that enables to have a preview, and insert the content into database.

Now we are making 'utilities', it means that we create a page/folder in the website only on dev (because dev is only available at the office) the utility will:

• read/insert/update/delete the content of the table on dev


• publish the content on prod (so the application copy the content of dev on prod)

=> one application is connected to both dev and production at the same time.

So we have a 'preview mode' (the dev website) and the content of both databases are sync.

I am uncomfortable because:

• the dev website becomes different than the prod website (utilities available only in dev) and some parts will never be synchronized (logic parts).


• I feel like this is not the goal of the dev environment to be used as preview mode.


• the application connects dev and prod database at the same time for sync reasons (so content of dev and prod are the same), I would like to know if there is a better solution.


• For sync reasons, the design of the dev table is different than the prod table (primary key is incremental in the first table but not in the second one)

What do you think about this process ?