I have been developing an app that maintains a mysql database which contains the following tables: the orders, the customers and the items table. This app is for the use of company employees to view, add and delete the orders.
I want to upload this entire database on an online server so that all the employees can download this database to their phones, add/remove orders and upload the modified database back to the central database. This is so that everyone can view all the modified orders, customer and the customers.
I googled it online and found out about parse servers, but I am not able to find any method to upload and download my current mysql database. I am using android studio to develop the app and running ubuntu. Please help as I am new to this :)
It is not a matter of upload or downloading the entire database so much as keeping the local phone and server databases synchronised. On the server you have the MySQL database and on the phones you probably have SQLite database. You have a php webservice you have written to allow CRUD actions on the Mysql database. You run these actions by calling this webservice from your Java code on the phones to maintain the synchronisation. You need to think about the lifecycle of the transactions so you do not end up with clashes where two users try to update a record at the same time. There will be frameworks to help with this, but you could use a field as a record locking flag. You minimise the synchronisation traffic by working at record level for synchroinisation.
If real time synchronisation is going to be too complex, the nature of your work may allow you to restrict employees to CRD and avoid update, this may allow you to have a batch syncronisation process at night, which would be simpler.
I know this is rambling a bit and is not a full answer, but it might give you a helpful idea of the task ahead.