Manual:$wgContentHandlerUseDB/en

Details
Set to false to disable use of the database fields introduced by the ContentHandler facility. This way, the ContentHandler facility can be used without any additional information in the database. A page's content model is then derived solely from the page's title. This however means that changing a page's default model (e.g. using ) will break the page and/or make the content inaccessible. This also means that pages can not be moved to a title that would default to a different content model.

Overall, set to, no database updates are needed, but content handling is less robust and less flexible.