Re: Schema versioning in postgres

talk2abhinav@gmail.com (abhinav mehrotra) writes:
> My database schema is susceptible to change between various release of
> the product. There may be new fields added or old fields removed from
> a table.
> Introduction of new fields seems to simple, but removal/truncated or
> data type does not seem to very direct.
>
> Does postgres has any support for such schema versioning?

Postgres generally conforms to the SQL standard, which (fairly properly)
does not offer any particular functionality surrounding schema
versioning.

A technique that seems commonly used is to record a version number in
the database, whether within a table, or as the name of a table:

insert into version_info.schema_version (system, version, installed)
  select 'my_system', '2.2.3', now();

On one of my applications, I encode relevant stuff as a series of tables:

cbbapp@localhost->  \dt
                                    List of relations
    Schema    |                 Name                 | Type  |           Owner
--------------+--------------------------------------+-------+---------------------------
 _cbbaversion | branch_is_1.0.9-SNAPSHOT             | table | don't_need_to_know_who
 _cbbaversion | generated_on_host_cbbrowne           | table | don't_need_to_know_who
 _cbbaversion | schema_generated_at_2011-01-28 15:28 | table | don't_need_to_know_who
 _cbbaversion | svn_version_7321                     | table | don't_need_to_know_who
(4 rows)

We've "saved the day" a few times by having applications set up to
refuse to start up (e.g. - indicate a FATAL error) if the schema version
found did not match the version that an application expects.

This requires no special functionality from Postgres beyond allowing the
developer to:

 - INSERT new tuples into a version table
 - DROP/CREATE/RENAME tables
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