Building a Database Directly from Object-level Source Scripts

Table manifests, and object manifests, which are just ordered lists, are a very useful output from and development database build. This article show how to generate a table manifest in SQL, and once you have it, you'll start to find several uses for it, besides the build process. Read more

Reviewing SQL Migration Files Before a Flyway Migration

Your finger is hovering over the 'enter' key to set off the Flyway "migrate" command, but you hesitate. There is a large stack of migration files for this project: don't all these files need to be checked first? Yes, they do, but how? This article demonstrates how, once armed with the file path locations of all the scripts, you can use PowerShell to search them for various purposes such to review them for potentially disruptive changes, or run code quality checks, or to verify documentation standards. Read more

A Real-world Implementation of Database DevOps: People, Processes, Tools

This series of articles describes a path you can take to transforming an existing, manual and error-prone database development and release process into an automated and reliable Database DevOps 'pipeline', starting here with an overview of what we set out to achieve, and the people, processes and tools involved. Read more

Using SQL Backup in Flyway Development Work

For a development team, SQL Backup provides a simple way to restore development or test databases, if required, while minimizing the tedium of the task of taking, managing, and restoring the backups. We can generate the required backup commands in the GUI and then use them to construct a SQL script that backs up all the required databases. We can even use the backup commands in a beforeMigrate SQL callback, in Flyway, to make sure the current version is safely backed up before we run migration. Read more

Try Before You Commit in Flyway

Sometimes we want to check whether it is possible to run a Flyway migration without error, but not actually make the changes. We might just need to 'sanity test' the performance of a migration on the Staging server, for example. By using a placeholder 'switch' to trigger a SQL Exception, we can get Flyway to roll-back its transaction, and therefore the migration, on demand. Read more

Finding the Version of a Flyway-managed Database Using SQL

Maintaining a version of a database opens a lot of possibilities, especially if an automated process can easily grab the current version, at runtime, using just SQL. You might, for example, have a routine that is only appropriate after a particular version. It is also very handy to be able to associate entries in an event log or bug report with the database version. No more desultory quests, when dealing with support issues, or when bug fixing, to find which database version was running when the bug happened. Read more

Rollbacks, Undos and Undonts

Rollback scripts are designed to allow us to recover safely from a failed deployment that leaves the database in an indeterminate state. They must check exactly what needs to be reverted before doing so. If you work with an RDBMS that cannot support transaction DDL rollback they are vital. This article proposes a strategy where you create and test a rollback file, at the same time as the forward migration, and reuse it as a Flyway undo script. Read more

Managing Static Data in Flyway Database Development

If your database application requires 'static data' to function, then the best way to manage that data is using a view based on a derived table. This article demonstrates ways to create these views, depending on your RDBMS's capabilities, and how to build and manage them in development work, using Flyway and PowerShell. Read more

Managing Datasets for Database Development Work using Flyway

A cross-RDBMS way of exporting, deleting and inserting data, for database development work. It is a PowerShell automation technique for Flyway that uses JSON files for data storage. It should help a team maintain datasets between database versions, as well as to switch between the datasets required to support different types of testing. Read more

The Uses of Dependency Information in Database Development

Dependency information will allow you to avoid errors during a database build or tear-down, by ensuring you create or remove objects in the right order. It will also help you to avoid future 'invalid object' errors, because it will allow you to check that no database alterations have introduced broken references, during Flyway migrations. Read more

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