ASO Application and Database Copy

One of my colleagues had an interesting question yesterday.

He was asking me how to do an ASO copy. My straight answer to him was well..just copy over the application and database. Rename them if you will and then load the level 0 export from Staging to Publish. At which, he replied that he has a design from the Lead Architect on the project to use a different methodology to do the copy of the ASO application, which by the way is a reporting staging application, to a published application. Here's how it goes according to the architect -

1) Disable users on the Publish application