The Update Process: Changelog

Liquibase is a tool that allows databases to evolve along with application code changes. It defines a process of tagging the current database, creating change logs describing required changes, and executing migrations during updates. The document outlines how to perform common database changes like adding/dropping tables and columns using Liquibase.

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The Update Process: Changelog

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Update A Database With Liquibase

A version-based database migration tool and process allow you to

evolve your database together with the code. You can then perform
the required update operations when you install a new version of
your application on your development, test or production system.

The Update Process

The update process consists of 3 parts:
1. You should create a backup and tag the current version of the
database so that you can roll back all your changes if necessary.
2. While you implement your code changes, you should define a
changeLog that describes the required changes of your
database.
3. And when you install your update, you need to execute the
database migration and roll it back if any error occurs.

Tag the current database

The tag is not required to roll back your changes. Liquibase can also
roll back the executed changeSets one by. But I prefer to tag my
database before I perform any updates. That gives me a defined state
to which I can go back easily if anything goes wrong.
You can create a tag with Liquibase’s command line client by calling
the tag command with the name of the tag and the connection
information.
liquibase --driver=org.postgresql.Driver \
--classpath=myFiles\postgresql-9.4.1212.jre7.jar \
--changeLogFile=myFiles/db.changelog-1.0.xml \
--url="jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/test_liquibase" \
--username=postgres \
--password=postgres \
tag v1.00

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Update A Database With Liquibase
Liquibase can’t restore any data that got deleted during the database
migration. You should, therefore, create a backup before you perform
any update.

Define the Update ChangeLog

You should have 1 changelog file for each software update. So, you
have 1 file for version 1.0 and another one for version 1.1.
As soon as you have more than 1 changelog file, you should add a
master changeLog that includes all other files. So, for this series of
posts, I have a db.changelog.xml file which includes the files
db.changelog-1.0.xml and db.changelog-1.1.xml.

You can then provide the master changelog to the Liquibase client. It
will iterate through the included files and check which changeSets need
to be executed to update the database to the latest version.

Add a Table
You can use a createTable tag to tell Liquibase to create a new
database table. The follwing XML snippet creates the author table
with the columns id, firstname, lastname and version.
This changeSet also contains a rollback tag. That’s because Liquibase
doesn’t generate a rollback operation when you create a new
database table. If you want to remove the table when you perform a
rollback, you need to use the rollback tag to provide your own
rollback operation. You can use it with all other Liquibase tags, or
you can provide SQL statements that shall be executed.

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Update A Database With Liquibase
<changeSet author="Thorben" id="1">
<createTable tableName="publisher">
<column name="id" type="BIGINT">
<constraints nullable="false"/>
</column>
<column name="name" type="VARCHAR(255)"/>
<column name="version" type="INT">
<constraints nullable="false"/>
</column>
</createTable>
<rollback>
<dropTable tableName="publisher" />
</rollback>
</changeSet>

Rename a Table
You can rename a database table with a renameTable tag. It requires
2 attributes: the oldTableName and the newTableName. You can also
define the catalogName and schemaName.
You don’t need to provide the rollback operation when you rename a
table. Liquibase can generate the required statement. But you can
use the rollback tag to override the generated statement.

<changeSet author="Thorben" id="2">

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Update A Database With Liquibase
Drop a Table
You can drop a database table with the dropTable tag. As you can see
in the following code snippet, you just need to provide the tableName
as an attribute.
Be careful and create a database backup before you drop a table.
Otherwise, you will not be able to restore any data that’s stored in
the table.

<changeSet author="Thorben" id="1">

Add a Column
You can add a database column with an addColumn tag with a
tableName attribute and one or more column tags.
Liquibase can generate the rollback operation, so you only need to
specify it if you want to override the generated statement.

<changeSet author="Thorben" id="3">

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Update A Database With Liquibase
Rename a Column
You can rename a database column with the renameColumn tag. It
requires the attributes tableName, oldColumnName and
newColumnName.
You don’t need to provide a rollback tag for this operation. Liquibase
generates the required statements.

<changeSet author="Thorben" id="4">

Drop a Column
You can drop a database column with the dropColumn tag and the
attributes tableName and columnName.
Before you drop a database column, you should create a backup of your
database. Liquibase can’t generate the rollback operation and it’s most
often impossible to recreate the deleted data without a backup.

<changeSet author="Thorben" id="5">

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Update A Database With Liquibase
Merge 2 Columns
This operation creates a new table column, sets the concatenated
value of the 2 old columns as the value of the new one and drops the
2 old table columns.
You can define this operation with a mergeColumn tag and attributes
to define the tableName, the finalColumnName and finalColumnType,
the names of the 2 old columns as column1Name and column2Name
and an optional joinString.

<changeSet author="Thorben" id="6">

A merge of 2 database columns is another operation that Liquibase

can’t rollback automatically. I always recommend to create a
database backup before you perform this operation and to use that
instead of a set of rollback operations.

Execute the Update

You just need to call the Liquibase client with the master changeLog
file. It will check all included files and determine which changeSets it
needs to execute. The client will then generated the required SQL
statements and either export or execute them.
You can generate the SQL statements with the following call of the
Liquibase client application.

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Update A Database With Liquibase
liquibase --driver=org.postgresql.Driver \
--classpath=myFiles\postgresql-9.4.1212.jre7.jar \
--changeLogFile=myFiles/db.changelog.xml \
--url="jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/test_liquibase" \
--username=postgres \
--password=postgres \
updateSQL

After you reviewed the generated statements, you can call the update
command with the same parameters. Liquibase will then find and
execute the required changeSets to migrate the database to the
latest version.

liquibase --driver=org.postgresql.Driver \
--classpath=myFiles\postgresql-9.4.1212.jre7.jar \
--changeLogFile=myFiles/db.changelog.xml \
--url="jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/test_liquibase" \
--username=postgres \
--password=postgres \
update

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