I know that it is a very old question, but I wanted to add the good solution with some in depth explanation. You will have to execute two statements on Ubuntu like systems and then it works like a charm.
Permissions in Linux can be represented with three digits. The first digit defines the permission of the owner of the files. The second digit the permissions of a specific group of users. The third digit defines the permissions for all users who are not the owner nor member of the group.
The webserver is supposed to execute with an id that is a member of the group. The webserver should never run with the same id as the owner of the files and directories. In Ubuntu runs apache under the id www-data. That id should be a member of the group for whom the permissions are specified.
To give the directory in which you want to change the content of files the proper rights, execute the statement:
find %DIR% -type d -exec chmod 770 {} \;
.That would imply in the question of the OP that the permissions for the directory %ROOT%/database should be changed accordingly. It is therefor important not to have files within that directory that should never get changed, or removed. It is therefor best practice to create a separate directory for files whose content must be changed.
Reading permissions (4) for a directory means being able to collect all files and directories with their metadata within a directory. Write permissions (2) gives the permission to change the content of the directory. Implying adding and removing files, changing permissions etc.. Execution permission (1) means that you have the right to go into that directory. Without the latter is it impossible to go deeper into the directory. The webserver needs read, write and execute permissions when the content of a file should be changed. Therefor needs the group the digit 7.
The second statement is in the question of the OP:
find %DOCUMENT_ROOT%/database -type f -exec chmod 760 {} \;
Being able to read and write a document is required, but it is not required to execute the file. The 7 is given to the owner of the files, the 6 to the group. The webserver does not need to have the permission to execute the file in order to change its content. Those write permissions should only be given to files in that directory.
All other users should not be given any permission.
For directories that do not require to change its files are group permissions of 5 sufficient. Documentation about permissions and some examples:
https://wiki.debian.org/Permissions
https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/309527-understanding-linux-file-permissions