Files
spring-boot-demo/db-migrations-expand-contract/docs/03-why-migrations-run-outside-the-app.md
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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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# 3. Why migrations run outside the app
[← 2. The expand migration](02-the-expand-migration.md) · [Next: 4. The dual write →](04-the-dual-write.md)
Every other module in this repository lets Spring Boot run Flyway on startup —
`spring.flyway.enabled=true`, migrate-on-boot, the default most tutorials show. This
module turns that off:
```yaml
flyway:
enabled: false
```
from
[`application.yml`](https://ankurm.com/git.app/asmhatre/spring-boot-demo/src/branch/main/db-migrations-expand-contract/src/main/resources/application.yml),
and instead ships a second, standalone entry point:
[`MigrationCli`](https://ankurm.com/git.app/asmhatre/spring-boot-demo/src/branch/main/db-migrations-expand-contract/src/main/java/com/ankurm/expandcontract/migration/MigrationCli.java):
```java
Flyway flyway = Flyway.configure()
.dataSource(url, "sa", "")
.locations("classpath:db/migration")
.target(target)
.load();
flyway.migrate();
```
invoked by [`scripts/migrate.sh`](https://ankurm.com/git.app/asmhatre/spring-boot-demo/src/branch/main/db-migrations-expand-contract/scripts/migrate.sh):
```bash
java -cp "$MODULE_DIR/target/classes:$(cat "$CP_FILE")" \
com.ankurm.expandcontract.migration.MigrationCli --target="$TARGET"
```
Why bother, when "migrate on boot" is one line of config? Because "migrate on boot"
quietly welds a schema change to an application restart, and expand-contract's whole
argument is that those two things need to be independently controllable events:
- Deploy 1 (expand) and Deploy 4b (contract) run a migration with **zero** app
restarts — every replica keeps serving traffic on its current code the entire time
the `ALTER TABLE` executes. `scripts/run-all.sh` calls `migrate.sh` directly for
both of these, with no `stop-instance.sh` / `start-instance.sh` anywhere nearby.
- Deploys 2, 3, and 4a are **pure code deploys** — a rolling restart with `--target`
fixed at whatever the schema already is. No new SQL runs.
If Flyway ran on every boot, a canary replica restarting for an unrelated reason (an
OOM, a node reschedule, a routine redeploy of a config value) would silently re-run
whatever migrations hadn't executed yet, at a moment nobody chose. Running Flyway from
its own process, invoked deliberately by the deploy pipeline (or by hand, as this
module's scripts do), means a schema change happens exactly once, at exactly the
moment someone decided it should — the same discipline a real CI/CD "run migrations"
job step gives you, kept intact here even though this whole sequence runs on one
sandbox.
The `--target` flag is what lets `migrate.sh 2` mean "get the schema to exactly V2,
no further" — the same `spring.flyway.target` property
[`TestSupport.migrateTo`](https://ankurm.com/git.app/asmhatre/spring-boot-demo/src/branch/main/db-migrations-expand-contract/src/test/java/com/ankurm/expandcontract/TestSupport.java)
uses to put a test database at "however far Deploy N has gotten" before exercising
`CustomerService` against it.
## Going deeper
- `MigrationCli` connects to the same standalone H2 TCP server the app replicas do —
[chapter 12](12-the-auto-server-trap.md) covers why that database is its own
process rather than something either replica owns.
- Flyway's own migrate-on-startup vs. separate-migration-step tradeoff is discussed in
[Flyway's documentation on migrations](https://documentation.red-gate.com/fd/migrations-184127470.html) (nofollow).
[← 2. The expand migration](02-the-expand-migration.md) · [Next: 4. The dual write →](04-the-dual-write.md)