We’re excited to announce that users can opt-in/out of preview features that are under development directly in Flyway Desktop. There are currently three preview features that will be in the next major version of Flyway Desktop; a new connection dialog with options to provision databases, a full schema model view, and support for static data in PostgreSQL databases. See below for more details. We’d love for you to try these out and give us your feedback.

There are also 2 minor breaking changes that you should be aware of:

1. We will no longer support json project files
2. We will no longer ship flyway-dev, since all the capabilities are in the flyway command line

See below for more details. We do not expect these changes to impact many users. Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns about these changes.

Try out preview features

The Flyway development teams are continuously working with users and improving the experience and capabilities in Flyway. We frequently release ongoing development work behind a feature flag. Before this, you had to be one of the “cool kids” and know the secret setting to enable preview features. Now, you can learn more about the preview features and opt-in or out directly in the Flyway Desktop settings.

Use the Settings cog in the top right to access the Preview features.

From here, you can learn more about the preview features and toggle each feature on/off. These features will apply to every project on your machine.

Please get in touch with the Development Team if you have any questions or feedback on these preview features.

Database connection dialog

This feature is toggled on by default. Having the feature on provides more options whenever you configure your database connection details (Development, Shadow, or Target databases). If this feature is on, you are not using the preview feature unless you explicitly choose one of the new options on the bottom left to provision a database for the environment using Redgate Clone, Docker, a backup file, or a Redgate snapshot.

The cards on the left allow you to see all the provisioning methods at a glance. Clicking on each card will guide you through the information needed for that provisioning method. If you are working with a team and save the connection details to the project settings instead of the user settings, your other team members must also be on a version of Flyway that supports this. This preview feature is on by default so it should be able to be used across the team to try it out unless someone has toggled it off or they are on a very old version of Flyway Desktop.

One scenario where these new provisioners come in handy is the work we have been doing with SQL Server users to use a backup to represent the baseline for their shadow database instead of a baseline script. If the shadow database needs to be rebuilt (cleaned and migrated), then the backup is restored as a baseline, which aligns the shadow database with what production looked like at the time the backup was created, and then any pending migrations are applied.

Using a backup for the shadow database can help avoid 2 main problems with a baseline script:

1. The baseline script is thousands of millions of lines long and can take a significant amount of time to run and build up the environment from scratch; restoring a schema-only back is very quick
2. The baseline script might contain invalid objects or refer to external servers which are not available and cause the script to fail; restoring a backup avoids this problem all together

Learn more about backups as a baseline.

Note: These provisioners are only available in Flyway Enterprise. Some provisioners only work for certain databases, e.g,. Redgate Clone is available for SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL. Redgate Clone also requires a license for Redgate Test Data Manager. The Backup provisioner currently works for SQL Server. We’re working on having this option for Oracle too.

Full schema model

This feature is toggled on by default with a little tour to introduce the new layout, which provides you with a lot more information about all the schemas and their objects that you are tracking in version control.

With the toggle off, the Schema Model page only shows the differences between your development database and your schema model on disk. If you wanted to see the full schema model, you could jump to the project folder and navigate to it on disk.

If the toggle is on, you can still see the differences between your development database and your schema model on disk on the left-hand side, and you also see the full schema model on the right. The full schema model shows each schema and it’s objects that are being tracked in version control. 

You can click on an object in the right hand side to see how it’s stored in version control.

If you’re working in a dedicated development database or switching between branches, this preview feature also moves applying changes from the schema model to the development database to it’s on page to avoid confusion of having both actions (save to schema model / apply to development database) on one page. Applying changes from the schema model to the development database makes changes to your development database. You will get a confirmation dialog to ensure you want to do this. It is important to be careful if you are on a shared development database that you are not accidentally ondoing your colleagues’ changes.

Note: The Schema Model is only available in Flyway Teams and Flyway Enterprise for SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL databases and their variants (e.g., Azure SQL DB, Maria DB).

Static Data for PostgreSQL databases

It’s very important to track your static data changes alongside your schema changes in version control and have these changes integrated into your deployment process. We’ve supported static data for SQL Server and Oracle for a while and we’re excited to make the public preview for tracking, versioning, and deploying static data changes available for PostgreSQL databases too. Read all the details in our other blog post. You won’t see this in the Preview feature dialog above. It’s available for all PostgreSQL projects in the Schema model page.

Minor breaking changes

There are 2 breaking changes you should be aware of.

1. We will no longer support the flyway.json configuration files. These only existed for a short time before we moved to the flyway.toml files, which allows for greater flexibility. If you are still using json files, you are prompted to upgrade to the toml format in the current release. Please upgrade to the toml format before upgrading to Flyway Desktop v8 when it’s released.
   
2. We will no longer be shipping the flyway-dev commands in Flyway Desktop v8 when it’s released. These commands were only available in Preview. The capabilities these commands provided are now available directly in the flyway cli. The new commands allow you to automate actions performed in Flyway Desktop, e.g., create a new project, save changes to the schema model, and generate migration scripts. We find some teams don’t use Flyway Desktop and instead automate this as part of a Pull Request or Merge Request (PR/MR) process. They can then review the generated migrations as part of the PR/MR approval process and deploy the changes in a repeatable and reliable way in their CI/CD systems. You can learn more about automating developer workflows using the flyway cli in our docs.

Your feedback

Your feedback is very important to us. If you have questions about any of these features, or if you have tried any of the preview features and found them useful, then please send us a quick email so we can learn more from you. We’ve also added more links in Flyway Desktop for feedback on preview features. Thank you!