Any advantages to using Liquibase for database migrations?

Question

I'm evaluating Liquibase and trying to figure out if it has any advantages for data migrations over just using SQL scripts. Suppose I'm doing the following:

My version 0 database schema looks like this:

CREATE TABLE  `Person` (
  `id` bigint(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `firstName` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `lastName` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

The database is populated with some existing data represented by the following insert:

INSERT INTO `Person` (`id`, `firstName`, `lastName`) VALUES (1, 'foo', 'bar');

I then decide to add another column to the Person table that is not null but I don't want to lose any existing data. The migration script from version 0 to version 1 would look like this:

ALTER TABLE `Person` ADD COLUMN `dob` date DEFAULT NULL;

UPDATE `Person` set `dob` = '1970-01-01';

ALTER TABLE `Person` MODIFY COLUMN `dob` NOT NULL;

Could Liquibase make this use case easier?

Nathan Voxland Nathan Voxland · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-06T17:38:54

The main thing liquibase gives you is the ability to track which changes have been applied to which databases.

In your example, the SQL you are listing would be exactly what liquibase would do, but it will be able to know that your dev database is at version Y and when you "update" your database it will only apply a couple new changes whereas production is on version X and when you "update" production it will apply more changes.

Note: liquibase tracks changes independently rather than using a single version to support multiple developers and/or code branches.

Beyond the work of tracking the applied changes, other advantages liquibase would give you include:

Ability to have the same change description on multiple database types.
Ability to have if/then logic in what is applied.
Generated documentation of database history.
Ability to specify more complex, multi-statement changes easily.

Any advantages to using Liquibase for database migrations?

3 Answers