[Mediawiki-l] two discrete wikis can use the same database?

[Markus Krötzsch]

On 11/11/2010 11:18, Anastasia Dimou wrote:
> Hey everybody,
> I was wondering whether I can have two discrete wikis (semantic wikis to
> be more accurate) sharing the same database on the same server. My
> intention is to launch a simpler copy of the existing wiki (so they are
> going to have the same database scheme). I want both of them to be
> up-to-date, namely, if someone edit the one, the changes should appear
> on the other as well. Is this possible?

Hi Nata,

when installing MediaWiki with the MySQL backend, you are asked to 
provide a prefix for DB tables. This can be left empty, but it can also 
be some short string such as "mywiki" (or whatever). Wikis will put this 
text in front of all database table names, thus allowing multiple sets 
of MediaWiki tables to co-exist in the same database. This setting is 
also honoured by SMW.

Changing this setting in an existing wiki will not automatically move 
the data to new tables, though. This task would fall under the topic of 
migrating wikis between/within databases for which you should find many 
resources in the MediaWiki documentation. For SMW, it suffices to 
re-initialise the database, and to rebuild the database content once the 
MediaWiki pages were moved (this can usually be done via a web 
interface, see the SMW documentation on "Repairing SMW" for details).

-- Markus