java rake db:migrate implementations

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I was surprised that there were so many libraries that do the same thing — manage change in  your database schema. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

  • Liquibase (migrations are specified in db-generic XML)
  • migrate4j (migrations must be writted in java, and has “down” and “up” support)
  • AutoPatch (“down” and “up”, with both .sql and .java support)
  • dbmigrate (no “down” — only “up”, with both .sql and .java support, but no test coverage)
  • c5-db-migration (nice integration with maven)

I’ve used a heavily patched version of dbmigrate on my last project at work, and it’s doing what it’s supposed to. I’ve only read documentation for the other projects.

Update March 2010:

dbmigrate is abandonware that doesn’t have any unit test coverage. I’d suggest looking at c5-db-migration.

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  • http://twitter.com/wisher86 mario

    Which one do you suggest to add indexes to a database automatically generated by Hibernate?

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    I don’t know of any dbmigrate libraries that integrate with hibernate — if you find one, I’d love to hear about it.

    What you can do is generate the schema automatically with hibernate using the hbm2ddl functionality, then copy that DDL into your dbmigrate scripts, adding whatever you need (like indexes).

    For unit tests of the hibernate wiring I normally use h2, but when there’s SQL in your DAO, you should test with the database engine you’ll use in production.