Management of CMS config data in DB

I was wondering if anyone here has come up with good methods for dealing with management of the Drupal config data stored in the DB along with content data. This isn't just an issue for Drupal, but this is a general problem for all CMS systems.

For anyone not intimately familiar with this thorny gem of an issue ;-) Drupal "configuration" data stored in the DB can be seen as meta-code in the sense that it controls high-level application features like URL architecture, page/block structure, user roles, etc. The problem is that, ideally, this data can be extracted and revisioned apart from content data, allowing for deployment of your Drupal application in it's entirety outside of the otherwise canonical production system - e.g. to staging servers, developer boxes, etc. The default "solution" is to copy the entire production DB whenever you need a snapshot of the application somewhere else.

Any insight or pointers to other resources greatly appreciated.

Thanks - Chip