Zero-Downtime Database Migrations: The Expand and Contract Pattern
How to change a live schema without an outage: expand, backfill in batches, switch reads and writes, then contract. With safe NOT NULL, renames and lock timeouts.
5 articles
CI/CD and workflow
Migrations in pipelines, testing them in Docker, zero-downtime changes and documentation that updates itself.
Articles in this category
Testing Database Migrations in CI with Docker and Testcontainers
Run migrations against a throw-away real database on every change: a Testcontainers and Flyway example, CI service containers, version matrices and schema checks.
Schema Drift: How to Detect It and How to Prevent It
What schema drift is, how it creeps in through hotfixes and unsynced environments, the tools that detect it and the workflow that stops it coming back.
Database Documentation Best Practices for Engineering Teams
What to document about a database, where it should live, how to generate the parts that rot, and how to keep schema docs honest through code review and CI.
How to Keep Your Database Diagram Up to Date with CI
Turn the schema diagram into a build artifact: regenerate it from the migrations on every change, commit it through a pull request and review the diff.
Draw your schema in the next five minutes
One HTTP call with your migration files, one poll, one SVG. Free while we build it.