Databricks has quickly become the engine room of modern analytics platforms. A growing number of teams have, and continue to, build solutions on Databricks which provide key insight to decision makers in their organizations. As it takes on that central role, the data model and the schema underneath it, the catalogs, tables, and procedures everything is built on, needs the same governance and control throughout their lifecycle.

We’re excited to share that the advanced capabilities that SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL teams already rely on in Flyway Enterprise, are now available for Databricks. Flyway Enterprise features for managing Lakehouse objects, via Unity Catalog integration, are now in Preview. We are also able to support you on your journey to using Databricks Lakebase for your OLTP and AI workloads, building on our tried and trusted PostgreSQL capabilities. Everything you need to manage database change through your database stack with confidence is now all in one solution.

Why this matters for Databricks teams

Teams developing and managing Lakehouse and Lakebase face the same challenges that have slowed database development down for years. Tracking, managing and coordinating changes from multiple team members. Manually creating scripts to migrate changes from one environment to another, hoping that schemas are what are expected. It’s time consuming, but manageable with one or two solutions and a small team. However, it does not scale. As the complexity increases, teams grow, and with code being created at an incredible rate with AI assistants, staying in control gets harder.

Common issues felt by teams are:

• Schema changes that were applied outside of any migration process that nobody documented
• Deployment failures caused by differences between development and production schemas that weren't caught until it was too late
• Migration scripts that take hours to write because the delta between two schemas must be figured out manually

Flyway Enterprise can help with all these challenges across your whole data platform; SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and now Databricks too.

What are the advanced capabilities

Redgate Flyway Enterprise has supported deploying changes to Databricks for some time with foundational capabilities. Now we’re going further. The advanced capabilities that SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL teams already rely on in Flyway Enterprise have arrived for Databricks Lakehouse and Lakebase, in Preview.

With Flyway Enterprise advanced capabilities, Databricks teams can:

1. See and version every schema change, for a clear record of what changed, when, and why
2. Generating versioned and undo migrations scripts, which account for dependencies, avoids human error and save time
3. Catch problems before they ship, with automated policy checks and clear reports on what a deployment will do
4. Keep every environment honest, by detecting drift and folding it back into the migration process
5. Move faster with confidence, because the speed and the safety come from the same workflow

Try out the preview

The capabilities are tested and now available in Preview. We want real feedback from real teams before we make them generally available. We're looking for users who:

• Are actively using Databricks (Lakehouse Unity Catalog or Lakebase)
• Want tighter control over how schema changes are managed and deployed
• Need to understand schema changes across their environments

If that sounds like your team, we'd love to hear from you. Email us to access the free trial Preview or sign up for a 30-minute Zoom session to chat if the Preview is a good fit for your setup.

We're actively shaping these features based on feedback from early users. If you want to help shape the future of these capabilities, now is the time to get involved. For more details about the Preview, see our documentation.