I use mysqldump to do my testing. If I already have a database I start with

mysqldump -d database > test_database.schema
echo create database test_database | mysql
mysql test_database < test_database.schema
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Now when I am creating/updating tests I can:

  mysqldump test_database > test_database.schema
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Then I can recursively do

  mysql test_database < test_database.schema
  mysql test_database < alter_database
  mysql test_database < add_test_data
  ./Build test
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until I am happy with the tests. Then when I install of the new code base I should only need to run

mysql database < alter_database
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as an additional step. I then use this code to make sure that the databases have the same structure.

use Algorithm::Diff;

my @a = grep( !/Database:/, split('\n', `mysqldump -d tasker`));
my @b = grep( !/Database:/, split('\n', `mysqldump -d test_tasker`));

my $diff = Algorithm::Diff->new( \@a, \@b );

while($diff->Next()) {
    next if  $diff->Same();
    next if /Database:/;
    print "< $_\n"   for  $diff->Items(1);
    print "> $_\n"   for  $diff->Items(2);
}
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