In this article, I'll explain why we often need to maintain variants of the same database, at a particular version. I'll demonstrate how useful variants can be for creating slightly modified installations of a database, for special uses, or even for the simple task of provisioning multiple copies of the same version. In doing so, I'll show how we can use Flyway locations to overcome problems that would otherwise require complicated solutions. Flyway can make the whole matter of maintaining database variants very easy. Read more
This article demonstrates how to use PowerShell to fetch your login credentials from Windows Credential Manager and pipe them securely to Flyway without ever saving them in any form, such as in a file or environment variable. Read more
This article demonstrates a cross-RDBMS way of searching through a set of SQL migration files, in the right order, to get a narrative summary of what changes were made, or will be made, to one or more of the tables or routines within each migration file. Getting these summary reports, even from a set of SQL migrations, isn't difficult, but having a few examples makes it a lot quicker to get started. Read more
This article demonstrates two techniques for allowing Flyway to read extra configuration information from a secure location, possibly encrypted. The first technique pipes the contents of the config file to flyway via STDIN, and the second uses PowerShell splatting. This makes it much simpler to use Flyway to manage multiple development copies of a database using role-base security. Read more
This article describes a simple technique that will allow you to use Flyway securely, even in cases where more than just the login credentials need to be protected. It uses a PowerShell technique that converts an encrypted Flyway configuration file into an array of parameters that Flyway can read just as if you were typing them in. Read more
If you are using SSDT for authoring, building, debugging, and publishing a database project, how do you change to, or preferably migrate towards, a Flyway-based database development? Flyway doesn't need to replace any code part of SSDT, but if allowed to manage every release candidate, it does allow for much cleaner branching, merging, and deployments. Read more
In an SSDT-Flyway hybrid development, the required database changes may be delivered as a DACPAC, but we get far more control over merge operations and deployments if they are done using Flyway migrations. This article demonstrates how to automate as much as possible of the work required to extract a Flyway-compatible migration script from a DACPAC. Read more
When you are integrating Flyway into an existing SQL Server SSDT development, you don't necessarily have to change everything at once. The development team might continue to use the SSDT tools, but Flyway will soon take over the deployments. This means that any automated processes will need to be able to handle both DACPACs and Flyway migration scripts with equal grace. In this article, I'll demonstrate how to automatically extract a versioned DACPAC from each new Flyway version of a database. Read more
This article explains why Flyway is fundamentally well-suited to the task of bringing control and automation to database development work and then the features of Flyway Teams edition that become necessary when a team of developers need to work concurrently on a database. Read more
This article outlines the syntax of the three and four dot references that usually denote external database references, demonstrates how to find them either from a live database or by using a text search of a script, and explains some of the complicating factors that can lead to 'false positives'. Read more
