Environment Synchronization

What is meant by Environment Synchronization in a typical SDLC ?

Maintaining and configuring the same set of configurations, systems, softwares across the development, QA, Staging and Production Servers and environments.

Why is it important to maintain environment synchronization?
When a build or a tar file goes from development Integrated environment to the qa for testing there should be only one change. i.e., the configuration of the url path and the directory paths.

Does any one know how many tables can a database have

Hi,

Does anyone know how many tables mysql5 can a database have.