[rendall]

I've kind of reconsidered this a bit. Right now, the only way to test that the database and frontend interact properly is to visit the website and enter data and see it reflected either in the database or in the frontend.

It's less terrible to have a local instance that does the same thing. As long as the immediate next step is setting up and running a local database.

[chinathrow]

But the ting is, you have no idea if not even a single GET request fires of an internal batch job to do X on the DB.

I mean, there are plenty of systems in place who somehow do this (Wordpress cron I think) so that's not unheard of.

For me, still a nope: Do not run a against prod DB especially if the live system accounts for 20M yearly revenue.