How can I isolate *content* from *configuration* in the database?
There are different ways of passing the configuration data between various environments;

1 - Features


  The features module enables the capture and management of features in
  Drupal. A feature is a collection of Drupal entities which taken
  together satisfy a certain use-case.
  
  Features provides a UI and API for taking different site building
  components from modules with exportables and bundling them together in
  a single feature module. A feature module is like any other Drupal
  module except that it declares its components (e.g. views, contexts,
  CCK fields, etc.) in its .info file so that it can be checked,
  updated, or reverted programmatically.


It can be used in combination with Strongarm .

2 - Configuration Management


  ability to keep track of specific configurations on a Drupal site,
  provides the ability to move these configurations between different
  environments (local, dev, qa, prod), and also move configurations
  between completely different sites (migrate configurations) without
  the use of modules with all configuration being owned by the site.