Some teams in our company are currently "upgrading" some legacy projects to use Flyway. One problem is that there exists multiple installations with already available database objects (baseline).
We currently have (and definitely will have more in the future as well) a use case, where we have to create some new migration scripts, but they only should run when certain conditions about the current state of the database are met.
For example: run this script, but only if table X in the database contains data Y
I have already seend Flyway conditional db migration, but to me this doesn't seem like the right solution, since the condition isn't just some static environment. The condition if a migration should be executed or not should be dependent on the current live state of the database.
I myself have not much experience with Flyway, but more with Liquibase. There I would implement it like this:
<preConditions onFail="WARN">
<sqlCheck expectedResult="0">select count(*) from oldtable</sqlCheck>
</preConditions>
Is there an equivalent in Flyway?
To my knowledge, no, Flyway itself can't do this kind of conditional statement. However, since flyway just runs the scripts in order, put the conditional command within the deployment script and that will work. Flyway simply executes the scripts, so they can be customized as you need them to be.
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We have not used Flyway from the beginning of our project. We are at an advanced state of development. An expert review has suggested to use Flyway in our project.
The problem is that we have moved part of our services (microservices) into another testing environment as well.
What is the best way to properly implement Flyway? The requirements are:
In Development environment, no need to alter the schema which is already existing. But all new scripts should be done using Flyway.
In Testing environment, no need to alter the schema which is already existing. But what is not available in testing environment should be created automatically using Flyway when we do migrate project from Dev to test.
When we do migration to a totally new envrionment (UAT, Production etc) the entire schema should be created automatically using Flyway.
From the documentation, what I understood is:
Take a backup of the development schema (both DDL and DML) as SQL script files, give a file name like V1_0_1__initial.sql.
Clean the development database using "flyway clean".
Baseline the Development database "flyway baseline -baselineversion=1.0.0"
Now, execute "flyway migrate" which will apply the SQL script file V1_0_1__initial.sql.
Any new scripts should be written with higher version numbers (like V2_0_1__account_table.sql)
Is this the correct way or is there any better way to do this?
The problem is that I have a test database where we have different set of data (Data in Dev and test are different and I would like to keep the data as it is in both the environments). If so, is it good to separate the DDL and DML in different script files when we take it from the Dev environment and apply them separately in each environment? The DML can be added manually as required; but bit confused if I am doing the right thing.
Thanks in advance.
So, there are actually two questions here. Data management and Flyway management.
In terms of data management, yes, that should be a separate thing. Data grows and grows. Trying to manage data, beyond simple lookup tables, from source control quickly becomes very problematic. Not to mention that you want different data in different environments. This also makes automating deployments much more difficult (branching would be your friend if you insist on going this route, one branch for each data set, then deploy appropriately).
You can implement Flyway on an existing project, yes. The key is establishing the baseline. You don't have to do all the steps you outlined above. Let's say you have an existing database. You have to get the script that defines that database. That single script should include all appropriate DDL (and, if you want, DML). Name it following the Flyway standards. Something like V1.0__Baseline.sql.
With that in place, all you must do is run:
flyway baseline
That will establish your existing code base as the start point. From there, you just have to create scripts following the naming standard: V1.1xxx V2.0xxx V53000.1xxx. And run
flyway migrate
To deploy appropriate changes.
The only caveat to this is that, as the documentation states, you must ensure that all your databases match this V1.0 that you're creating and marking as the baseline. Any deviation will cause errors as you introduce new changes and migrate them into place. As long as you've got matching baseline points, you should be able to proceed with different data in different environments with no issues.
This is my how-to instruction on integration flyway with prod DB: https://delicious-snipe-938.notion.site/How-to-integrate-Flyway-with-existing-MySQL-DB-in-Prod-PostgreSQL-is-similar-1eabafa8a0e844e88205c2f32513bbbe.
I have delivered a Product to the customer. Now I have upgraded the Product, which includes changes to the database.
Customer wants to upgrade the Product. Now will Flyway help in the migration of Customer data from older version to newer version. Please let me know, if this is a valid use case. The flyway documentation talks about its use during development only.
Flyway allows you to change your database by running a set of scripts in a defined order. These scripts are called 'migrations' as they allow you to 'migrate' your database from one version to another.
The idea is you can start with an an empty database and each migration script will successively bring that database up from empty up to the current version. However, it's also possible to start with an existing database by creating a 'baseline' migration.
As SudhirR said, Flyway's primary use case is to define schema changes. However, it's perfectly possible to change data also. Since Flyway is just running plain SQL, in principle almost anything you can do in a SQL script you can also do in a Flyway migration.
In the case you described it should be possible to use Flyway to migrate the customer database. The steps you could take are:
Generate a sql script that includes the entire DDL (including indexes, triggers, procedures, ...) of the production database. To do this you will need to add insert statements for all the reference data present in the database.
Save this script in your Flyway project as something like 'V1__base_version.sql'
Run the flyway baseline command against your production database
This will set up your production database for use with Flyway
Add a new migration script to migrate your customer's data to the new version
e.g. create new table, copy data from old table to new table, delete old table
Run flyway migrate to upgrade production
These steps are adapted from the Flyway documentation page here.
Of course you should read the Flyway docs and manually test on a throwaway DB before you run anything against production. However I think in principle Flyway could be a good fit for your use case.
Flyway should be used for schema migrations and any reference data (basic data that is required by the system/application in order to function properly).
Putting client specific data migrations would not be a use case. However, if you can represent the data migration "generically" by not using IDs and instead use names or types than it could be a candidate. Meaning if you could write a migration in a way that could be applied to all clients, then that would be the use case to put it in as a flyway migration.
Otherwise data migrations would be applied in some other way outside of the process like requesting special access to the database or having some team that manages the database to apply the scripts.
If you are doing custom data modifications quite often then I'd say something is wrong in some other area of the SDLC and you may need to increase testing so that bugs don't mess up the data in the first place.
I'm using SQLite for a few small projects and I've run into an issue today that is easily solved using other SQL databases but apparently it's a major stumbling block here.
Typically, we manage schema updates using a separate file for each update...
setup.001.sql
setup.002.sql
...
setup.011.sql
etc.
Through the use of various if statements, we can check if certain schema updates need to be performed within the SQL scripts themselves such that it's simply a matter of executing each script in order to bring any version of the database to the current version.
So I've found a couple of issues with this in SQLite:
There does not appear to be an if statement
There does not appear to be a clean way to retrieve PRAGMA user_version into a local variable for checking
How then, does one execute updates dependent on this information internally within a SQL Script? I do not want to have to code a separate update script in another language just to be able to run these scripts conditionally. This seems like a pretty basic need for any database provider.
SQLite is an embedded database; it is designed to be used together with a 'real' programming language. You have to put the logic into your own application.
The output of PRAGMA user_version can be read like the output of any other query.
I looked at the Flyway samples and documentation and tried to understand if it is useful in my environment.
The following conceptual detail is unclear to me: How does Flyway manage the changes between database versions? It obviously does NOT compare database life-instances (see answer here:Can Flyway find out and generate migration files from datamodel?)
In detail my setup looks like this:
I create SQL create and insert scripts when coding (automatically and manually). This means every version of my database is represented by a number of insert/create statements.
In my world I execute these scripts through a database tool (sqlplus from Oracle). Each run would setup the database _from_scratch_ (!).
Can I put these very same scripts 1 to 1 inside the "migration" path of Flyway? What happens if the target database is way older than the last "migration step" I did (or flyway did not yet exist when it was installed)?
Update:
I got some input from another Flyway user:
It seems like each "migration" (version of the database) has to be hand-written SQL/Java code and contains only "updates" from the previous "migration" of database.
If this is true, I wonder how this can be used with traditional coding technics: in my world SQL statements are generated automatically and contain all database init/create statements, not just "updates" to some previous version. If my SQL code generator could do that, then I wouldn't even need a tool like Flyway :-).
Your question about "how to handle a DB that has a longer history than there are migration scripts?" You need to create a V1_ migration/sql script that matches/recreates your latest DB schema. Something that can take a blank DB to what you have today. Create/generate that sql script using your existing DB tools and then put it in flyways migration directory. (And test V1 by using flyway against a clean DB and see if you get what you expect.) http://flywaydb.org/documentation/existing.html
After that point in time, all later versions must be added in as you work. When you decide you need a new table, in your dev environment, write a new V*_.sql that modifies your schema to the way you need it.
This blog goes over this situation for a Spring/SQL application. https://blog.synyx.de/2012/10/database-migration-using-flyway-and-spring-and-existing-data/
I think the documentation (http://flywaydb.org/getstarted/existingDatabaseSetup.html) is not clear enough and would like the description to be illustrated with an example. I have one for you:
Let's say we have two different versions (1 and 2) of the production database whose schema version is implicit but deterministic by querying the existing tables. How will we then achieve what is described in the documentation?
In my example the two versions both have a script attached:
Version 1: Create table A
Version 2: Create table B
I have created java migration files matching the scripts for versions 1 and 2 but since the flyway metadata is missing I need to query the database whether the scripts have been run and skip them in that case. The problem is that the application crashes since Flyway has not been initialised.
I don't want to initialise Flyway from the commandline since I want this to be done automatically upon deployment (Flyway in embedded mode). From what I've seen this only works with empty databases.
Is there a simple solution to this problem?
For single PROD databases, you can use flyway.initOnMigrate
In your case you would have to wrap Flyway and recreate this manually by inspecting your tables and calling either init with flyway.initialVersion=1 or with flyway.initialVersion=2, followed by a call to migrate.