Tag: FWTips

One of the cool things I’ve seen with the new Flyway CLI is that I can combine multiple actions together in one call, which can make the process of writing automations streamlined.

I’m not sure I love this, but I’ll show how this works.

I’ve been working with Flyway Desktop for work more and more as we transition from older SSMS plugins to the standalone tool. This series looks at some tips I’ve gotten along the way.

Making a State-Based Deployment from the CLI

In a previous post, I showed how to use the new prepare and deploy verbs to create a deployment script and then apply it to a database. This is a great way to handle simpler deployments if you want to work in a state-based fashion with Flyway.

That post showed two different CLI calls, which are shown below:

flyway prepare -prepare.source=schemaModel -prepare.target="env:qa" -prepare.scriptFilename="deployments\FWState__deployment.sql"
flyway deploy -scriptFilename="deployments\FWState__deployment.sql" -environment=qa -executeInTransaction=true

Easy enough, and I like this structure as I’d likely build a pipeline that looks like this, where I prepare the script, then have a manual approval step to check this before deployment:

However, you might argue that someone would check the script in a QA or other deployment, so maybe you streamline things later, or you use this as a QA/test deployment and want everything to run smoothly after a PR.

In that case …

Chaining Commands

I can run this code instead.

flyway prepare deploy …

Let’s see this work. If you look, I have a couple of changes that I can see in Flyway Desktop. There is a table alter and a new stored procedure.

I can streamline the automation of these two changes in the CLI with the code style above with this code:

flyway prepare deploy -prepare.source=schemaModel -prepare.target=”env:qa” -environment=qa -executeInTransaction=true

Here is the pre-execution look at my database:

The execution, which didn’t use a transaction. I’ll have to figure that one out:

And the post database view with the table and proc changes deployed.

I built and deployed the script in one command, and it also appeared to have added my script to the deployments folder. No idea why that happened either.

If you want commands chained, you can do it.

Summary

This post showed how you can chain your prepare and deploy commands together in one command, which might be preferable in some situations.

I don’t know if I like this, or would do it, but it’s not a bad idea. Ultimately, I’d really like this deployment script to be saved back to the repo so I could track it, but that’s going to be some work, and likely that means not chaining commands.

Flyway is an incredible way of deploying changes from one database to another, and now includes both migration-based and state-based deployments. You get the flexibility you need to control database changes in your environment. If you’ve never used it, give it a try today.

This was actually a cool tip I saw internally from one of the product managers, when trying to find specific text in a migration.

I’ve been working with Flyway Desktop for work more and more as we transition from older SSMS plugins to the standalone tool. This series looks at some tips I’ve gotten along the way.

A Large Project

I’ve got a project in Flyway Desktop that I add to regularly. It doesn’t do anything amazing, but I keep slowly adding objects, with the idea that I want to build up a large project for showcasing different things to customers. You can look at the project here if you are interested.

In my list of migrations, I’ve got a number of migrations, 21 to this point. It is a little hard to read names here, but I’ve named each script to make searching easier. I’ve included a create or alter, a type, and an object name. This helps me use the search box at the top of FWD, which searches migration names.

Most of these are relatively small scripts, one or two objects. A few are a little larger. If I select a particular one (21 as shown below), the code scrolls off the screen. Even if I expand the code listing to take up the entire screen, I can’t see all the code.

More importantly, it can be hard to visually find something in the code. If you’ve ever edited a stored procedure of 100 or more lines, you know what I mean.

One of our PMs pointed out recently that you can use the standard browser CTRL+F if you’ve clicked into the script. I’ve done this below and the search widget pops up at the top of the code. I’ve entered part of an object name here, prod, and you can see this shows 6 matches.

The first one is highlighted in a pale yellow color in the code.

If I click the down (or up) arrows in the search widget, the code jumps around, as it would in a browser. You can see below I’ve jumped down to the 4th occurrence, with the 2nd and 3rd highlighted in an orange(ish) color, while the 4th also has the yellow background bar.

Many of us would perform work on this code in an IDE (SSMS, ADS, etc.), but while managing a project or perhaps evaluating something else, we might want to quickly find something in code in FWD. Perhaps reviewing a change I’m about to commit. USing CTRL+F might be a handy feature.

I do wish the search was more comprehensive at the top, and could dig through all the files in the project, but at least I can search within a file here. Having a good naming convention for migrations also helps me to find the high level purpose for a migration in the list.

Flyway Enterprise

Try Flyway Enterprise out today. If you haven’t worked with Flyway Desktop, download it today. There is a free version that organizes migrations and paid versions with many more features.

If you use Flyway Community, download Flyway Desktop and get a GUI for your migration scripts.

Video Walkthrough

I made a quick video showing this as well. You can watch it below, or check out all the Flyway videos I’ve added:

Redgate added Git integration to the free, Community edition of Flyway Desktop. I saw the announcement and decided to make this post to show how this can work for a new project.

We do need git installed, so head over to the free git download if you don’t have it. From there, install Git and you’re ready to go.

I’ve been working with Flyway Desktop for work more and more as we transition from older SSMS plugins to the standalone tool. This series looks at some tips I’ve gotten along the way.

Source Controlling Your Project

When you start Flyway Desktop Community, you should see the edition in the upper left, as shown here.

I’ll click Open project, and choose one of my existing projects. When I do that, I see all the migrations in the project. I can also select or add a target and run flyway commands from here.

What’s new is the right hand sidebar, which now has the VCS controls. If I click the left arrow in the upper right, I get the sidebar to expand. I can see I don’t have any changes. This bar wasn’t available previously, but now it is.

Let’s make a change. I’ll close this (click the arrow at the top) and return to the migrations screen. I’ll click the “add migration” button (the arrow points to this in the image below).

When the editor opens, I’ll add some code. I’ll also change the name. Notice there are no changes in the right sidebar.

When I save this, all of a sudden, there is a single change in the middle of the bar.

Expanding the sidebar and clicking on the middle icon, I see my one change has been added as a migration script.

I can add a comment and commit this or continue working. When I’m done committing, I can easily push my changes from here to the remote.

I’m manually managing scripts in Community Edition, but I can do it all from Flyway Desktop, including all the version control work.

Flyway Enterprise

If you want to get more from Flyway, try Flyway Enterprise out today. If you haven’t worked with Flyway Desktop, download it today.

If you use the CLI Flyway Community, download Flyway Desktop and get a GUI for your migration scripts as well as version control.

Video Walkthrough

No video walkthrough this week as I’m on the road.

You can check out all the Flyway videos I’ve recorded.

One of the little details that I find matter more and more in enterprises is understanding why a tool behaves a certain way. OSS/home-grown ones often have limited docs, but vendor tools should have great docs. Today I learned about how to easily find Flyway comparison defaults, which is the topic of this post.

I’ve been working with Flyway Desktop for work more and more as we transition from older SSMS plugins to the standalone tool. This series looks at some tips I’ve gotten along the way.

The Defaults

Do you know all the SQL Compare defaults? Would you realize it if someone changed them? Do you think they’re the same in Flyway? I actually don’t know about the latter question, and I’m not digging through and comparing the options.

In any case, I saw an internal discussion recently about documentation and someone pointed out that we have this page that discusses where you change options. It’s good for that purpose, but it doesn’t list the defaults.

However, at the bottom, there are links:

• Oracle comparison options
• SQL Server comparison options

If you click through, then you get a list of default options. There is first a link to the full list of options (SQL Server, Oracle) as well as a link to SQL Compare options (SQL Server, Oracle).

The SQL Server page looks like this:

Note the sentence just below the image, which links to all the options. The second link is for the SQL Compare option explanations. Below this, you see the default options. This is a table of options, which looks like this image. Note this says certain options are set to true and all others false.

If I click through to the full list, I see this:

I can see all the settings and if they are required. I also see an example of the TOML file below this, where I can set these and store them in version control.

If you want to change behavior of the comparison engine in Flyway, or double check if someone else has changed something, this is the place to check.

Note, if you are looking to induce certain behavior, changes should be made in a TOML file for the project and flow through a PR process for approval and into a pipeline. Don’t edit these options directly, or change them in a pipeline.

Flyway Enterprise

Try Flyway Enterprise out today. If you haven’t worked with Flyway Desktop, download it today. There is a free version that organizes migrations and paid versions with many more features.

If you use Flyway Community, download Flyway Desktop and get a GUI for your migration scripts.

Video Walkthrough

I made a quick video showing this as well. You can watch it below, or check out all the Flyway videos I’ve added: