made extensive changes on local test server, best way to apply to live site

Hi, I have mirrored my live site locally, added and made changes to pages and posts, coverted post types, added several plugins, activated a different theme and added widgets and custom menus. I would really like to check the best way of going about applying my changes.
No changes have been made on the live site that matter.
Locally if I want to restore my database from a backup I have just imported the sql file but I read here http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/restore/ that you’re supposed to drop all the tables first – is this correct? would it not just overwrite the tables in the database?
Then as far as uploading via ftp, I don’t think I have changed anything on the server except for the plugin files, so would i just need to upload them and import the sql (with amended server name) in order to apply the changes?