Database migration with Flyway

· March 14, 2016

In this post I describe how to evolve a database schema using Flyway. I will create a simple service which manages athletes using postgresql as datastore.

The initial database schema:

CREATE TABLE athletes (
    id BIGSERIAL,
    first_name varchar(255) not null,
    last_name varchar(255) not null,
    PRIMARY KEY (id)
);

Now let’s imagine a business requirement to store also the country of origin of the athletes and to be able to search athletes based on their first name. This requires, beside the necessary code changes, updates to the database schema. I need to add a new country field and I need to create an index on the firstName field. I would like to roll out the database schema changes together with the code changes as an atomic unit. Let’s see how can I do it with Flyway.

I have set up the athletes service using postgresql with docker-compose, the code is available on my github account.

version: '2'
services:
  postgres:
    image: athletes-datastore-image
    container_name: athletes-datastore
    build: build/db
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"
  web:
    image: athletes-service-image
    container_name: athletes-service
    build: build/libs
    depends_on:
      - postgres # athletes-datastore will be started before the athletes-service
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    links:
      - postgres

When the athletes-datastore container is created it creates the initial database schema seen above with some example data.

FROM postgres:9.5.1
MAINTAINER [email protected]
ENV POSTGRES_USER docker
ENV POSTGRES_DB mydb
COPY 1_schema.sql /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/
COPY 2_data.sql /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/

When the athletes-service container starts up I will use flyway to apply the necessary database migrations.

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:postgresql://postgres/mydb
spring.datasource.username=docker

# fail application start if schema is not present
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=validate 

# disable database initialisation with Spring JDBC
spring.datasource.initialize=false

flyway.enabled=true

# Controls whether to a automatically call baseline when migrate is executed against a non-empty schema with no metadata table.
# Only migrations above the baseLineVersion (default 1) will be applied
flyway.baseline-on-migrate=true

The database schema changes are in form of sql files in the db/migration folder

ALTER TABLE athletes ADD COLUMN country VARCHAR(200);
CREATE INDEX first_name_idx ON athletes (first_name);

Let’s build the project and start up the services

$ ./gradlew clean build
$ docker-compose up

In the logs it is visible that the database changes are applied

o.f.core.internal.util.VersionPrinter    : Flyway 4.0 by Boxfuse
o.f.c.i.dbsupport.DbSupportFactory       : Database: jdbc:postgresql://postgres/mydb (PostgreSQL 9.5)
o.f.core.internal.command.DbValidate     : Successfully validated 2 migrations (execution time 00:00.024s)
o.f.c.i.metadatatable.MetaDataTableImpl  : Creating Metadata table: "public"."schema_version"
o.f.core.internal.command.DbBaseline     : Successfully baselined schema with version: 1
o.f.core.internal.command.DbMigrate      : Current version of schema "public": 1
o.f.core.internal.command.DbMigrate      : Migrating schema "public" to version 2 - Add country field to athletes table
o.f.core.internal.command.DbMigrate      : Migrating schema "public" to version 3 - Create index first name in athletes table
o.f.core.internal.command.DbMigrate      : Successfully applied 2 migrations to schema "public" (execution time 00:00.047s)

And indeed if I connect to the postgresql instance via

psql -h 192.168.99.100 -d mydb -U docker

the schema_version records the applied changes:

installed_rank  | version |                description                |   type   |                      script                       |  checksum  | installed_by |        installed_on        | execution_time | success
----------------+---------+-------------------------------------------+----------+---------------------------------------------------+------------+--------------+----------------------------+----------------+---------
              1 | 1       | << Flyway Baseline >>                     | BASELINE | << Flyway Baseline >>                             |            | docker       | 2016-03-14 09:24:38.979852 |              0 | t
              2 | 2       | Add country field to athletes table       | SQL      | V2__Add_country_field_to_athletes_table.sql       | -674532233 | docker       | 2016-03-14 09:24:39.043319 |              4 | t
              3 | 3       | Create index first name in athletes table | SQL      | V3__Create_index_first_name_in_athletes_table.sql | 1143920342 | docker       | 2016-03-14 09:24:39.064954 |              4 | t

If I stop the docker containers with docker-compose stop (I needed to disconnect from psql otherwise stopping athletes-datastore blocks) and start it again via docker-compose start in the logs it is visible that the schema changes are up to date.

o.f.core.internal.util.VersionPrinter    : Flyway 4.0 by Boxfuse
o.f.c.i.dbsupport.DbSupportFactory       : Database: jdbc:postgresql://postgres/mydb (PostgreSQL 9.5)
o.f.core.internal.command.DbValidate     : Successfully validated 3 migrations (execution time 00:00.020s)
o.f.core.internal.command.DbMigrate      : Current version of schema "public": 3
o.f.core.internal.command.DbMigrate      : Schema "public" is up to date. No migration necessary.

Set country of origin of an athlete:

$ echo '{"country":"Jamaica"}' | http patch http://192.168.99.100:8080/athletes/1

Search based on first name:

$ http get http://192.168.99.100:8080/athletes/search/findByFirstNameIgnoreCase/\?firstName\=usain

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/hal+json;charset=UTF-8
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 10:43:29 GMT
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
X-Application-Context: application:postgresql

{
    "_embedded": {
        "athletes": [
            {
                "_links": {
                    "athlete": {
                        "href": "http://192.168.99.100:8080/athletes/1"
                    },
                    "self": {
                        "href": "http://192.168.99.100:8080/athletes/1"
                    }
                },
                "country": "Jamaica",
                "firstName": "Usain",
                "lastName": "Bolt"
            }
        ]
    },
    "_links": {
        "self": {
            "href": "http://192.168.99.100:8080/athletes/search/findByFirstNameIgnoreCase/?firstName=usain"
        }
    }
}

To easily stop containers and remove the containers, networks, volumes and images created by docker-compose up I use

docker-compose down -v --rmi=all

I think Flyway is a very useful tool for handling database schema changes especially in a continuous delivery pipeline.

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