Question

I use both ruby on rails and Java. I really enjoy using migrations when I am working on a rails project. so I am wondering is there a migrations like tool for Java? If there is no such tool is it a good idea to use migrations as a tool to control a database used by a Java project?

Answer 1

I’ve used Hibernate’s SchemaUpdate to perform the same function as migrations. It’s actually easier than migrations because every time you start up your app, it examines the database structure and syncs it up with your mappings so there’s no extra rake:db:migrate step and your app can never be out of sync with the database it’s running against. Hibernate mapping files are no more complex than Rails migrations so even if you didn’t use Hibernate in the app, you could take advantage of it. The downside is that it’s not as flexible as far as rolling back, migrating down, running DML statements. As pointed out in the comments, it also doesn’t drop tables or columns. I run a separate method to do those manually as part of the Hibernate initialization process.

I don’t see why you couldn’t use Rails migrations though – as long as you don’t mind installing the stack (Ruby, Rake, Rails), you wouldn’t have to touch your app.