Files
asmhatreandClaude Sonnet 5 e478eafda3 Add db-migrations-expand-contract: zero-downtime schema migrations proven with a real 4-deploy rolling run
Companion code for Zero-Downtime Database Migrations: Expand-Contract in Practice
with Spring Boot: a full expand/migrate-writes/migrate-reads/contract sequence run
as an actual rolling deploy across two live replicas, with a load generator sending
continuous HTTP traffic through all four deploys (99.98% success, every residual
error traced to a root cause rather than left unexplained). Findings include a real
NOT NULL constraint trap in the expand migration, a backfill-window bug in the read
switch, H2's AUTO_SERVER=TRUE single-point-of-failure behavior under a rolling
restart, the drain-before-SIGTERM fix needed to close a health-check gap during
graceful shutdown, and H2 silently discarding a concurrently committed INSERT during
an ALTER TABLE ADD/DROP COLUMN rebuild - confirmed, by primary source, to be an
H2-specific behavior rather than a property of the technique itself.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Fb7vW8vLyLKngBc4R3huA
2026-09-16 19:22:48 +00:00

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# 9. The contract migration
[← 8. The rolling window proof](08-the-rolling-window-proof.md) · [Next: 10. What happens if you drop too soon →](10-what-happens-if-you-drop-too-soon.md)
Deploy 4 is split into two parts on purpose, the same way Deploy 1 was schema-only
and Deploys 2/3 were code-only:
- **4a — code.** A rolling restart to Stage 4, which never reads or writes `email`.
The old column is still physically present; Stage 4 code simply ignores it.
- **4b — schema.** Once every replica is confirmed on Stage 4 code, and only then,
[`V3__drop_email_column.sql`](https://ankurm.com/git.app/asmhatre/spring-boot-demo/src/branch/main/db-migrations-expand-contract/src/main/resources/db/migration/V3__drop_email_column.sql)
runs, with zero app restarts:
```sql
ALTER TABLE customers DROP COLUMN email;
```
[`ContractSafetyTest`](https://ankurm.com/git.app/asmhatre/spring-boot-demo/src/branch/main/db-migrations-expand-contract/src/test/java/com/ankurm/expandcontract/ContractSafetyTest.java)
confirms the happy path: Stage 4 reads and writes keep working, both for a row that
existed before the drop and for one created entirely after it —
```
-- Stage 4 read, after V3 dropped the email column --
Customer[id=1, name=Annie Easley, [email protected]]
-- Stage 4 create + read, entirely after the drop --
Customer[id=2, name=Mary Allen Wilkes, [email protected]]
```
Full transcript:
[`docs/output/09-contract-safety.txt`](https://ankurm.com/git.app/asmhatre/spring-boot-demo/src/branch/main/db-migrations-expand-contract/docs/output/09-contract-safety.txt).
Why not drop the column in the same deploy as the code change? Because "every
replica is confirmed on Stage 4" is a statement about the *fleet*, and a rolling
deploy makes it true only once, at the very end of the rollout — never at the moment
the deploy starts. Running 4b before that point is dropping a column a live Stage 1,
2, or 3 replica might still need. What that actually looks like, captured directly,
is [chapter 10](10-what-happens-if-you-drop-too-soon.md).
## Going deeper
- The DDL Deploy 4b runs is not, on this specific database engine, quite as free of
side effects on concurrent traffic as "just a schema change" suggests — see
[chapter 14](14-the-ddl-lock-window.md) for what H2 actually does while this
statement executes.
[← 8. The rolling window proof](08-the-rolling-window-proof.md) · [Next: 10. What happens if you drop too soon →](10-what-happens-if-you-drop-too-soon.md)