9 Liquibase Best Practices

Liquibase is a tool that helps developers manage database changes. It is used to track, apply, and roll back database changes.

Liquibase is a great tool, but like any tool, it has to be used correctly to be effective. In this article, we will discuss 9 best practices for using Liquibase. By following these best practices, you can ensure that Liquibase is helping you manage your database changes effectively.

1. Use Liquibase to manage all changes

Liquibase is designed to be the source of truth for your database changes. When you manage all changes with Liquibase, you can be confident that the changeset will always be accurate and up-to-date.

Additionally, managing all changes with Liquibase allows you to take advantage of Liquibase’s built-in features, such as preconditions and postconditions, which can help ensure that changes are applied safely and correctly.

2. Keep your changelog files in source control

Your changelog files are essentially a database of changes that have been made to your database. If you’re not keeping them in source control, then you’re at risk of losing that history.

Plus, if you ever need to roll back a change, it will be much easier to do if you have your changelog files in source control. You can simply revert to an earlier version of the file, and Liquibase will automatically roll back the changes.

Finally, having your changelog files in source control gives you a way to track who made each change, and when it was made. This can be extremely helpful when troubleshooting issues.

3. Run Liquibase as part of your build process

When you run Liquibase as part of your build process, it ensures that everyone on your team is working with the same database schema. This is important because it means that there will be no surprises when someone tries to run your application against a different database version.

It also means that you can easily roll back changes if something goes wrong. For example, if you make a change to your database schema and then realize that it breaks your application, you can simply revert to the previous version of your schema.

Running Liquibase as part of your build process is also a good way to automate your database deployments. This can save you a lot of time and effort, especially if you have a large database.

4. Don’t use SQL directly

Liquibase is designed to be a database-independent tool. This means that it can generate the SQL required for any given database, whether it’s Oracle, MySQL, or PostgreSQL.

If you use SQL directly, you’re tying your code to a specific database. This makes it much harder to switch databases in the future, and could cause problems if you ever need to run your code on a different database.

It’s much better to use Liquibase’s built-in functions, which will automatically generate the correct SQL for the database you’re using.

5. Always include a checksum

A checksum is a value that is generated based on the contents of your database changeset. It acts as a fingerprint for your changeset, and if the contents of your changeset are ever modified, the checksum will no longer match.

This is important because it means that you can be confident that your changeset has not been tampered with. If someone tries to modify your changeset, Liquibase will detect the change and throw an error, alerting you that something is wrong.

Without a checksum, there would be no way to know if someone had modified your changeset, and this could lead to all sorts of problems down the road. So always remember to include a checksum in your changesets!

6. Use preconditions and contexts to ensure the right changes are run at the right time

If you have a database that needs to be compatible with multiple applications, it’s important to make sure that the changes made for one application don’t break another. For example, you might need to add a column to a table for one application, but that column might not be compatible with another application.

Preconditions and contexts allow you to specify when a change should be run, and on what database(s). This way, you can make sure that the changes are only applied when they’re supposed to, and you don’t have to worry about them breaking anything.

7. Use labels to group related changes together

Suppose you have a development, staging, and production environment. In development, you might make a bunch of changes, add some new features, and so on. When you’re ready to push those changes to staging, you don’t want to push all of the changes at once because that would be too risky.

Instead, you can use labels to group related changes together and push them to staging (or production) in smaller batches. This way, if there are any problems with the changes, you can easily roll them back.

Liquibase also makes it easy to track which changes have been applied to which environments. This is important for auditing and compliance purposes.

To sum up, using labels to group related changes together is a best practice because it helps you push changes in a controlled and safe manner. It also makes it easy to track which changes have been applied to which environments.

8. Use rollback tags to mark when you want to be able to roll back to

If you are ever in the situation where you need to roll back your database changes, it can be very difficult to do so if you don’t have a rollback tag. A rollback tag is simply a label that you can apply to a changeset, which allows you to easily identify it and roll back to it if necessary.

Without a rollback tag, you would need to manually find the changeset that you want to roll back to, which can be time-consuming and error-prone. By using a rollback tag, you can quickly and easily roll back to a specific changeset, saving you time and effort.

9. Use changeSets with idempotent changes only

If a changeSet is not idempotent, then running it multiple times can result in different database states. This can cause problems when trying to roll back the changes, or when other developers try to run the same changeSet on their own databases.

Liquibase provides a number of built-in features that help make changeSets idempotent, such as the ability to check for existing data before inserting new records. However, it’s still important to carefully review your changeSets to ensure they will work correctly when run multiple times.