> what steps do you recommend to do the tables update on the production
> database?

When I work on our site DB, I follow the following steps:

1. Trash the existing dev DB and replace with the current live version
2. Develop!
3. Dump all the tables I have changed (structure and/or data) using
mysqldump:

mysqldump --default-character-set=latin1 --add-drop-table -u <user> -p
<dbname> <list of tables to dump> > output.sql

4. Zip the output, FTP to live server and unzip.
5. SSH to live server and backup DB with mydqldump.
6. Import the uploaded SQL file:

mysql --database=<dbname> -u <user> -p < output.sql

The import usually takes less than a second, so there is practically no
downtime.

Note that this works well as most of my DB is 'read-only'. I have to be more
careful when updating any tables that are written to via the app.

HTH,
Edward