Victoria Roe

28 October 2025

Redgate Flyway Enterprise’s code analysis: Enforce compliance, reduce risk, deploy with confidence

With increasing security threats and stringent compliance requirements, database code quality isn’t just a best practice; it’s a business imperative. Yet many organizations struggle to enforce their database development standards consistently across teams, leading to security vulnerabilities, potential data loss, and lengthy review cycles that slow down software delivery.

For teams managing database changes at scale, particularly in enterprise environments where multiple teams write database code, the challenge is clear: how do you maintain quality and compliance without creating bottlenecks or relying on manual, error-prone review processes?

At Redgate, we’ve heard from our customers that maintaining consistent standards across database deployments is one of their biggest pain points. A script written by one team might not meet the security standards required by another. A migration that would cause data loss might not be caught until it reaches production. And the back-and-forth to fix these issues can turn a simple deployment into a week-long ordeal.

That’s why we’re enhancing Redgate Flyway Enterprise’s code analysis capabilities. Our latest release brings automated, configurable code analysis directly into your database change management workflow – making it easier than ever to catch issues early, enforce compliance and governance standards, and deploy database changes with confidence.

Why it matters

Database scripts that bypass security best practices or risk data loss can have serious consequences. Many organizations rely on experienced DBAs and operations teams to catch these issues – and these manual reviews are valuable, drawing on deep expertise and contextual knowledge that’s hard to automate.

But even the most skilled review teams face challenges with this approach. Manual reviews are time-intensive, and when review teams are stretched thin, backlogs grow and value delivery slows. And we know what happens when deployment pressure mounts: reviews get rushed, or in some cases, skipped entirely. It’s not that teams want to bypass their own safeguards—but when the choice is between shipping on time or running a thorough review, business pressures often win. This creates risk precisely when teams can least afford it. Catching issues late in the process – after scripts have been written, passed through development, and reached shared codebases – means more unpicking, back-and-forth and longer deployment cycles. And for the review teams themselves, repeatedly checking for the same classes of issues (syntax problems, common anti-patterns, policy violations) can be exhausting work that takes time away from the complex, judgment-based reviews where their expertise truly matters.

Redgate Flyway Enterprise’s enhanced code analysis capabilities don’t replace the expertise of your review teams – they amplify it. By automating the detection of common, rule-based issues early in the pipeline, code analysis helps development teams catch problems before review, freeing up experienced team members to focus on work that makes the best use of their skills and adds real value to the organization.

With Redgate Flyway Enterprise, you can now:

• Automatically enforce your organization’s database standards with customizable rules for security, data loss prevention, and code quality
• Integrate code analysis seamlessly into existing pipelines without installation friction or additional tooling
• Adopt additional checks without blocking current work through configurable severity levels and flexible enforcement options

New capabilities powering Redgate Flyway Enterprise’s code analysis

Simplified installation and configuration

Redgate Flyway Enterprise’s code analysis is powered by two complementary engines: SQL Fluff for context-aware, structural analysis, and Regex for flexible pattern matching. SQL Fluff understands SQL syntax and structure, meaning it can accurately analyze your code without being tripped up by comments or complex formatting – catching issues that simple text-based searches would miss.

Previously, using SQL Fluff meant separately installing and configuring it alongside navigating the Python ecosystem – a barrier for many teams unfamiliar with Python tooling. Now, SQL Fluff and its dependencies come packaged directly with Redgate Flyway Enterprise. No additional installation steps, no separate configuration – just immediate access to powerful, context-aware code analysis capabilities out of the box.

Redgate-authored security and data loss rules

Building on SQL Fluff’s comprehensive rule library, we’ve added our own set of Redgate-authored rules specifically targeting the issues we hear about most from customers: security vulnerabilities and data loss risks. These rules address common pitfalls like:

• Security issues that could expose your data or systems
• Operations that risk unintended data loss
• Problematic patterns highlighted by enterprise customers

This initial rule set will continue to grow based on customer feedback and emerging best practices. Check out the Redgate SQL Fluff Rules Library

Flexible policy configuration and gradual adoption

Every organization has different standards, and what’s critical for one team may be less important for another. That’s why each rule in Flyway’s code analysis can be configured independently:

• Set rules to trigger warnings (informational feedback)
• Set rules to trigger errors (block deployment)
• Disable rules entirely if they’re not relevant to your organization

This flexibility extends to pipeline integration. New configuration options let you run code analysis in “advisory mode” – identifying violations without stopping your pipeline. This gradual adoption approach means you can:

1. Integrate code analysis into existing pipelines
2. Review the output to understand current issues
3. Fine-tune rule configurations for your environment
4. Address technical debt when the time is right for your team
5. Enable enforcement when you’re ready – without disrupting ongoing work

See it in action

Want to see how these code analysis capabilities work in a real deployment pipeline? Watch our 5-minute walkthrough showing Redgate Flyway Enterprise’s integrated SQL Fluff engine in action. From configuring rules to automatically blocking risky changes like “drop table” commands. Watch the Redgate University video.

How this helps your team

• Reduced security and compliance risk – Catch vulnerabilities and policy violations automatically before they reach production
• Faster deployment cycles – Eliminate lengthy troubleshooting by identifying issues early in the development process
• Consistent standards across teams – Automated enforcement ensures everyone follows the same rules, regardless of team or location
• Lower review burden –DBA, operations and deployment teams can spend more time innovating rather than manually checking for common issues
• Smooth adoption – Integrate code analysis at your own pace without blocking existing work

“Database code quality and compliance are increasingly non-negotiable for enterprise teams. With enhanced code analysis capabilities, Redgate Flyway Enterprise helps teams enforce their standards automatically catching issues early and maintaining consistency across even the most complex database change pipelines.” Max Drobot, Group Product Manager for Redgate Flyway

Explore what Flyway’s code analysis can do for you

Want to learn how Flyway Enterprise’s code analysis capabilities can help your team deploy database changes with greater confidence and less risk? Contact us today or explore our code analysis documentation.