Kumar Shantanu has implemented a Clojure DSL/wrapper for Liquibase which is has reached version 0.1. It is available at https://bitbucket.org/kumarshantanu/clj-liquibase/src. One more option for all you XML-haters out there

Nathan

For NetBeans users, there is a Liquibase plugin now available.

The current, 0.2 version implements rudimentary support and concentrates on the most needed functionality.

Features:

• Database connections stored in the Database Explorer plugin, so the developer doesn’t have to separately maintain the registry of connections.
• Executing a changeset by simply selecting it in the File or Project explorer windows and call the execution from a context menu action. The database connection can be selected during the execution
• A formatted log is displayed in the Output Window about the execution of the changeset, so the developer is properly informed if the changeset execution has failed.
• Custom icon for the Liquibase changeset files, so they can better distinguished from the ordinary files.

More information: http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/38564/liquorice-core

For those of you watching and/or contributing to the Liquibase source code, the repository has now moved from the old subversion repository at liquibase.jira.com to http://github.com/liquibase/liquibase.

Liquibase extensions maintained by the main Liquibase team have also been moved to the liquibase github group at http://github.com/liquibase.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask on the Liquibase development forum

I am planning a Liquibase Online Meetup for July 28th, 2011 at 12:00 US Central Time (GMT-5).

For more information, see http://forum.liquibase.org/#Topic/49382000000252083

Liquibase 2.0.2 has been released. It is primarily a bugfix release on the 2.0.1 release and can be downloaded from http://liquibase.org/download.

Visit the forum with any comments or questions. Release notes are available from liquibase.jira.com

With the 2.0.2 release, main development will shift to the 2.1 release. Liquibase 2.1 planning has begun with this forum post

2.0.3 is a very small update, mainly fixing the maven repository and the end of line char in the command line unix shell script.

Other bugs fixed are:

• Allow Changelog Parameters in raw SQL changesets and formatted SQL changelogs
• Sybase NUMERIC issue
• An issue with DB2 and defaultSchema

It has been a while since the last Liquibase release, and I wanted to give a quick status update.

The main thing I have been working on is the next version of Liquibase, which I am going to call 3.0.0. For those of you following along, the goal of 2.0 was to create an extensible system on top of liquibase as well as solidify the liquibase APIs for anyone wanting to integrate liquibase into their applications. Due to the size of that undertaking, the “diff” support did not get the same API cleanup and extensibility system in the 2.x release.

For the last several months I have been going through the diff side of the codebase, adding things such as:

• Standardized ways to specify mappings between “standard types” and “database specific types” in changeslogs
• Support for differentiation between catalogs and schemas
• The ability to add custom database objects to extract and compare in the snapshot/diff process
• The ability to change how database objects are extracted and compared
• Support for annotations in defining Change classes to make for easier subclassing
• Support for custom diff reporting formats
• Ability to handle multiple cross schema and catalog references in diffs

All-in-all I have about 400 changed files in my local repository that I have been waiting to push up to github until it is in a coherent state. I keep thinking “I’m sure it will be ready by next week” but keep finding more I would like to get done first. Because my local repository is so different than the github repository, I have not been bringing in the pull requests as I normally would. I will get to those once I get my changes pushed since I tend to do some modifications to the commits as part of the integration process.

I am calling the next version 3.0 rather than 2.1 because of the potentially breaking changes between 2.0 and 3.0. From an end-user standpoint, there will be little to no changes in the changelog format. Most breaking changes are in the internal liquibase APIs for those integrating liquibase and/or writing extensions. More information will be made available on breaking changes closer to release date.

Besides the code, I spent time lately dealing with defacement issues on liquibase.org and blog.liquibase.org. Because of this attack and earlier spam scripts that abused the wiki system, I am going to move the documentation and site from the current dokuwiki system to github. This has the advantage of better performance, the ability to manage branches of the documentation, and the ability to include an offline version of the manual with each release. Documentation changes will require a github pull request rather than the simpler wiki-style direct editing, however.

My planned timeline for 3.0 is to commit what I have within the next week or so, then merge in the pull requests and create a “3.0 alpha 1″ release. I moved around a lot of database-specific code that will take a while for me to test and would like to get some feedback from the community as soon as possible on new bugs or regressions that were introduced by the changes. I will make an announcement when the first 3.0 release is available for testing.

Since 3.0 is taking longer than I was hoping , it may make sense to have a 2.0.4 release with high value/easy fixes for those waiting for specific problems.

Are there existing bugs in http://liquibase.jira.com or pull requests at http://github.com/liquibase that you would like to see in a 2.0.4 release?

Preference will be given to bugs/features that have patches that can simply be applied to the 2.0 branch, since I don’t want to take more time away from 3.0 than I have to.

2.0.4 has been released. This is primarily a bug fix release during the main development on 3.0, but does include a few  enhancements as well.

Download from http://liquibase.org/download

New features:

• LoadUpdate support for H2
• Support ${} params in sql files
• Ability to load blob/clob data from files

Full release notes: https://liquibase.jira.com/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10020&version=10160

2.0.5 has been released. This is to fix a couple regressions introduced in 2.0.4.

Download from http://liquibase.org/download

Bug Fixes:

• Removed new load blob/clob data from files feature
• Fixed linux distribution shell script
• Command line updateSQL output is once again going to STDOUT

Full release notes: https://liquibase.jira.com/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10020&version=10360

Although it has been far too long since the last liquibase release, that is not from a lack of work. I’ve been hard at work at a major update that has been stuck in the “I think I’ll have it wrapped up next month” phase for over a year at this point. That is a topic for a future blog post, though…

I am, however, very pleased to announce Liquibase 3.0, beta 1. There is definitely a reason it is labeled as “beta” rather than “RC” as there is still a lot of work to do on documentation, API finalization, and bug fixes. In particular, my roadmap for 3.0 beta 1 -> 3.0.0 final is:

• Vet Liquibase API changes. The goal of the 2.0 release was to open Liquibase for integration and extensibiliy and I want a strong, stable API. Version 3.0 greatly expands the scope of how you can mold and shape liquibase, and I want to make sure that the APIs liquibase exposes are easy to use yet will support future features as well without breaking changes.
• Documentation update. The liquibase.org website is a bit dated and the there are many holes in the documentation. I am going to update that with a new github-based site and ensure it is up to date with what is new in 3.0 (and things missed from previous releases)
• Jira cleanup. http://liquibase.jira.com has gotten to be a mess in 3.0 with many duplicated issues, issues that have already been resolved, simple things that can be fixed still in 3.0 mixed with larger changes that will have to go in 3.1+, etc. I need to go through the list to make sure simple and/or blocker bugs are resolved and things that can wait for 3.1 are pushed out.
• Testing. I’ve primarily tested against Mysql, Oracle, SqlServer, HSQL, and H2. I need to make sure the other supported databases are working as well.

My hope is that 3.0.0 beta represents a feature complete 3.0 version, but the final walk through of features, bugs and extension points will probably find some additional larger changes to make. My plan is to have a new beta roughly bi-weekly until the 3.0.0 release in early April. However, “it’s software, so it can do anything except ship on time”.

Download

As always, you can download the release from http://liquibase.org/download and direct any comments or questions for http://forum.liquibase.org

Liquibase 3.0 beta 2 is now available.

Major changes since beta 1 include:

• Support for YAML and JSON formatted changelogs (see below)
• Support for excluding databases in dbms attribute (see below)
• Support for setting the dbms attribute on sql and sqlfile changes
• Can generate rollback script file on startup with SpringLiquibase
• Improved UTF8 support
• Improvements to case-sensitive database support
• Bugfixes

Excluding from dbms list

The dbms attribute now supports prepending a database name with “!” to specify which databases a changeset should not run on. For example: <changeSet dbms=”!oracle”>

JSON and YAML changelog support

For all you XML-haters out there, Liquibase now natively supports JSON and YAML formatted changelogs. The syntax and tags are very similar between the JSON, YAML and XML formats.

YAML example: https://raw.github.com/liquibase/liquibase/master/liquibase-integration-tests/src/test/resources/changelogs/yaml/common.tests.changelog.yaml

JSON example: https://raw.github.com/liquibase/liquibase/master/liquibase-integration-tests/src/test/resources/changelogs/json/common.tests.changelog.json

If you chose to use YAML or JSON format, you will need to include snakeyaml 1.12 in your classpath.

I’m continuing to work on shifting the documentation to github from the current wiki, and while there is still much more to do, you can at least see YAML and JSON change syntax example at http://liquibase.github.com/documentation/changes/add_auto_increment.html.

Download

As always, you can download the release from http://liquibase.org/download and direct any comments or questions for http://forum.liquibase.org

Although it has been far too long since the last liquibase release, that is not from a lack of work. I’ve been hard at work at a major update that has been stuck in the “I think I’ll have it wrapped up next month” phase for over a year at this point. That is a topic for a future blog post, though…

I am, however, very pleased to announce Liquibase 3.0, beta 1. There is definitely a reason it is labeled as “beta” rather than “RC” as there is still a lot of work to do on documentation, API finalization, and bug fixes. In particular, my roadmap for 3.0 beta 1 -> 3.0.0 final is:

• Vet Liquibase API changes. The goal of the 2.0 release was to open Liquibase for integration and extensibiliy and I want a strong, stable API. Version 3.0 greatly expands the scope of how you can mold and shape liquibase, and I want to make sure that the APIs liquibase exposes are easy to use yet will support future features as well without breaking changes.
• Documentation update. The liquibase.org website is a bit dated and the there are many holes in the documentation. I am going to update that with a new github-based site and ensure it is up to date with what is new in 3.0 (and things missed from previous releases)
• Jira cleanup. http://liquibase.jira.com has gotten to be a mess in 3.0 with many duplicated issues, issues that have already been resolved, simple things that can be fixed still in 3.0 mixed with larger changes that will have to go in 3.1+, etc. I need to go through the list to make sure simple and/or blocker bugs are resolved and things that can wait for 3.1 are pushed out.
• Testing. I’ve primarily tested against Mysql, Oracle, SqlServer, HSQL, and H2. I need to make sure the other supported databases are working as well.

My hope is that 3.0.0 beta represents a feature complete 3.0 version, but the final walk through of features, bugs and extension points will probably find some additional larger changes to make. My plan is to have a new beta roughly bi-weekly until the 3.0.0 release in early April. However, “it’s software, so it can do anything except ship on time”.

Download

As always, you can download the release from http://liquibase.org/download and direct any comments or questions for http://forum.liquibase.org

Liquibase 3.0 beta 2 is now available.

Major changes since beta 1 include:

• Support for YAML and JSON formatted changelogs (see below)
• Support for excluding databases in dbms attribute (see below)
• Support for setting the dbms attribute on sql and sqlfile changes
• Can generate rollback script file on startup with SpringLiquibase
• Improved UTF8 support
• Improvements to case-sensitive database support
• Bugfixes

Excluding from dbms list

The dbms attribute now supports prepending a database name with “!” to specify which databases a changeset should not run on. For example: <changeSet dbms=”!oracle”>

JSON and YAML changelog support

For all you XML-haters out there, Liquibase not natively supports JSON and YAML formatted changelogs. The syntax and tags are very similar between the JSON, YAML and XML formats.

YAML example: https://raw.github.com/liquibase/liquibase/master/liquibase-integration-tests/src/test/resources/changelogs/yaml/common.tests.changelog.yaml

JSON example: https://raw.github.com/liquibase/liquibase/master/liquibase-integration-tests/src/test/resources/changelogs/json/common.tests.changelog.json

If you chose to use YAML or JSON format, you will need to include snakeyaml 1.12 in your classpath.

I’m continuing to work on shifting the documentation to github from the current wiki, and while there is still much more to do, you can at least see YAML and JSON change syntax example at http://liquibase.github.com/documentation/changes/add_auto_increment.html.

Download

As always, you can download the release from http://liquibase.org/download and direct any comments or questions for http://forum.liquibase.org

Since the 3.0 beta 2 release, I have been focused on the new liquibase.org website, bug fixes, performance improvements, API cleanup and additional automated test creation and fixup.

Work remaining in the final push to 3.0.0:

• Finish documentation of new 3.0 features (including a “what’s new in 3.0″ list)
• Finish Java API cleanup/documentation
• Clean up “fix in 3.0.0″ Jira list that includes many issues that have already been fixed and others that will not make it for 3.0.
• Any remaining showstopper bugs found in RC1

My hope is to have 3.0.0 released in the first week of June.

Download

As always, you can download the release from http://liquibase.org/download and direct any comments or questions for http://forum.liquibase.org

The 3.0 RC1 release is the first 3.0 release that is available through the maven repository as well. It should be working it’s way through the mirroring process now.

It has taken longer to work through the remaining 3.0 bug list than I was hoping, and so do not have the 3.0 GA finished yet, but RC2 is now available.

Changes since RC1 include:

• All automated tests now pass
• Diff support: Improved detection and handling of changed attributes, like data type size
• Several fixes for DB2, Oracle, Postgres, MySQL and HSQL
• DBDoc logic now working again
• Better cleanup of temp files and directories
• Whitespace and newlines are now not taken into account for <sql> checksums

Download

As always, you can download the release from http://liquibase.org/download or through the maven repository. Direct any comments or questions for http://forum.liquibase.org

At long last, I’m happy to announce that Liquibase 3.0.0 is finally out!

There has been a lot of changes and a lot of work put into 3.0, but the major highlights are:

Additional extension support 

Starting with Liquibase 2.0, moving to a plugin/extension model has been a major focus of development. With 3.0 we focused on adding extension support for the database snapshot and comparison logic as well as for the DatabaseChangeLogLock code. The new extension support gives the ability to dynamically add snapshot support for additional database object types, control how those types are compared across databases, modify the logic used for comparing standard liquibase types, manage how fixes for differences in new and existing types are represented in generated changelogs, and much much more.

The general strategy for Liquibase is to have the core library easily support the 80% of functionality that is common across databases and across users, with built in features like contexts, changelog parameters, and modifySql that will cover up to 95% of use cases. Extensions will address the final 5% of use cases that are always very company specific and often contradictory to what other users expect.

The release timelines for 2.0 and 3.0 were much longer than I would have liked in large part because I was trying to build up the architecture to support the extension points people need. Now that 3.0 is out, the plan is to go back to a much smaller release cycle with more manageable feature changes and bug fixes while also better seeding and managing the community extensions.

For more information on extension support in Liquibase, visit the extension portal. Documentation is still lighter than I would like, but more will be coming.

Additional integration support

For those integrating with the Liquibase Java API, there is now more metadata available from Change classes as well as separated and better organized “diff” and “snapshot” logic.

End user improvements

For the normal user, Liquibase 3.0.0 adds:

• Support for preconditions in formatted SQL changelogs
• YAML and JSON changelog support
• Support for “catalog” attributes in all applicable change commands  in addition to the existing “schema” attribute
• Better support for case sensitive databases
• Maven now supports the generateChangeLog command
• Ability to specify sequences to read values from on <insert>
• Performance improvements
• Support ${} params in formatted SQL
• Improved Informix support
• Improved OSGi support
• Improved UTF8 support
• Can now use JDBC escape syntax in SQL
• “dbms” attribute supports NOT syntax (using ‘!’)
• Added futureRollbackCountSQL command
• Tablespace can be defined for liquibase tables
• Added ability to SKIP columns in a CSV file
• Many bug fixes

Upgrading to 3.0

For the normal Liquibase user, version 3.0.0 is a drop in replacement for any of the 2.x releases. For extension developers and integrators, there has been some changes to the Java APIs that may impact your code. Those changes will be documented at liquibase.org/v3_upgrade.html. Liquibase 3.0 now requires Java 1.6+.

Downloading 3.0

As always, you can download Liquibase from liquibase.org/download and direct any comments or questions to http://forum.liquibase.org.

The raw Jira release notes are available at https://liquibase.jira.com/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10020&version=10020

Now that 3.0.0 is out, I’ve cleaned up the Jira process a bit, created more git branches and tried to document it on the liquibase.org site.

On the liquibase.org top navigation bar, there is now a “Dev” link that brings to you to information on working with the Liquibase code, GitHub and Jira.

The branches page  describes the the new branching strategy where we have a “next” branch for the next major release and a “#.#.x” branch for each release family for patch releases. You can see it in action now with both 3.0.0 and 3.0.1 in the “3.0.x” branch and already some changes in the “next” branch for 3.1.

The Using Jira page describes how we use the various Jira fields. I simplified the Jira process a bit, taking out the “resolved” stage in favor of just “closed”, removed fields we were not using, and created additional components for better categorization.

There is other good information in the new developer section of the site including how to build Liquibase with Maven and I will continue to add more down the road.

Liquibase 3.0.2 has been officially released. It is a purely bugfix release. The major issues fixed are:

• Indexes and foreign keys were not being correctly handled in the snapshot/diff/generateChangeLog process
• Exporting data in generateChangeLog did not work

The full list of resolved issues:

• [CORE-169] – Oracle TIMESTAMPS not exported correctly
• [CORE-1301] – defaultschemaName not used
• [CORE-1315] – Database Objects do not get dropped on DB2
• [CORE-1317] – Not all FK Constraints get dropped on Oracle
• [CORE-1318] – Not all FK Constraints get dropped on SQL Server
• [CORE-1328] – includeAll trying to process invalid file types, should only process valid change log types
• [CORE-1331] – If logicalFilePath attribute is set on databaseChangeLog, I am unable to use relativeToChangelogFile=”true” on
• [CORE-1332] – includeAll of changelog files throws duplicate identifiers error
• [CORE-1335] – Data export support broken in 3.0
• [CORE-1336] – AutoIncrement not working with some types
• [CORE-1337] – Problem with changeset defined as runAlways=”true”
• [CORE-1339] – NPE on update if default ServiceLocator.packagesToScan is used
• [CORE-1340] – indexExists Changesets throwing PreconditionErrorException instead of PreconditionFailedException
• [CORE-1341] – foreignKeyConstraintExists precondition broken
• [CORE-1344] – addForeignKeyConstraint rejects referencesUniqueColumn
• [CORE-1347] – dropAll function work incorrectly when table has 2 foreign keys
• [CORE-628] – Specify the output encoding that liquibase should use to output data in Maven

If you were watching closely, you will notice that I forgot to announce 3.0.1 despite the fact that it was released on June 25th. That release included the following bugfixes compared to 3.0.0:

• [CORE-898] – Custom precondition xsd failing
• [CORE-1171] – Maven plugin displaying password in plain text
• [CORE-1320] – Cannot include YAML file
• [CORE-1323] – Conversion from char to SMALLINT is unsupported
• [CORE-1324] – Formatted SQL does not support contexts such as “some-context” or “some/context”

As always, you can download from http://liquibase.org/download and the new version should be working its way through the maven repository system. If you have questions or comments you can visit the forums at http://forum.liquibase.org.

Liquibase 3.0.3 has been officially released. As always, you can download from http://liquibase.org/download and the new version should be working its way through the maven repository system. If you have questions or comments you can visit the forums at http://forum.liquibase.org.

The 3.0.3 release is primarily a bug fix release, major categories of bugs fixed include:

• updateSQL output goes to STDOUT rather than STDERR. NOTE: This is what people expect, but if you are working around this bug you will have to update your scripts
• Fixes around data type parsing and handling
• Issues with the diff/generateChangeLog logic
• Informix-specific bugfixes

There is a new feature in 3.0.3 to control whether schema names are included in the SQL. This is particularly helpful in updateSQL mode to create schema-independent scripts. The new flag is called “outputDefaultSchema” and “outputDefaultCatalog”

Full Release Notes: https://liquibase.jira.com/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10020&version=10660

Bugs

• [CORE-844] – Integer with range limitations handled incorrectly on Oracle
• [CORE-1313] – Unique constraint name is ignored when adding a column
• [CORE-1316] – Column Type COMPUTED in loadData is not implemented correctly (shoud pass a DB Function instead of String to DB).
• [CORE-1327] – renameColumn and renameTable with Sybase
• [CORE-1329] – GenerateChangeLog on MSSQL exports a SMALLINT(5) – smallint does not allow precision
• [CORE-1336] – AutoIncrement not working with some types
• [CORE-1351] – PostgreSql 9 doesnt have datetime data type
• [CORE-1353] – AutoIncrement not working for numeric types
• [CORE-1354] – Sequences get dropped too early
• [CORE-1356] – Unnecessary size specifications on MEDIUMTEXT, TINYTEXT, MEDIUMBLOB, TINYBLOB from generateChangeLog
• [CORE-1358] – LiquiBase 3.0.2 writes ’3.0.0-SNP’ (Snapshot) to ‘LIQUIBASE’ column instead of ’3.0.2′
• [CORE-1362] – Informix fails when schema is not equal catalog
• [CORE-1363] – ForeignKey NPE during dbDoc generation
• [CORE-1364] – SQL Server incorrect INFORMATION_SCHEMA table case in native query
• [CORE-1366] – Oracle database dbDoc generation performance issues
• [CORE-1367] – updateSQL generates an empty file using standard output in 3 version
• [CORE-1369] – Whitespace in author in SQL formatted changelog causes that migration to be silently skipped
• [CORE-1370] – Oracle doesnt have DATETIME datatype
• [CORE-1371] – MySQL syntax error is thrown if schema name contains hyphens
• [CORE-1372] – Version Command Line Argument Incorrect
• [CORE-1373] – dropAll attempts to drop objects in other schemas under Oracle
• [CORE-1375] – “group” is not included as a reserved word
• [CORE-1377] – liquibase version says 3.0.0-SNP
• [CORE-1380] – ^M present in liquibase unix running file (from jar on maven repo)
• [CORE-1381] – DropAll: Not working with MsSql
• [CORE-1383] – Error attempting to re-create databasechangeloglock on second liquibase run if running in Oracle under SYSTEM user
• [CORE-1387] – dropAll fails with oracle since version 3.0.2
• [CORE-1388] – MSSQLServer: ‘REAL’ dataype is returned with unnecessary size modifier during generateChangeLog
• [CORE-1389] – AddLookupTable fails when using QUOTE_ALL_OBJECTS
• [CORE-1394] – additionalInformation lost in DataTypeFactory.fromDescription()
• [CORE-1395] – Bug in MSSQLDatabase.getViewDefinition()
• [CORE-1396] – Liquibase is loosing indices on foreign key columns
• [CORE-1397] – Informix DB: Size of VARCHAR more than 255
• [CORE-1398] – Missing or unexpected unique constraint not found on Postgres
• [CORE-1402] – Custom preconditions not passing XML validation
• [CORE-1403] – Default schema not correct when using <tableExists>
• [CORE-1405] – SpringLiquibase not closing connection if rollback exception
• [CORE-1406] – MySQL loadUpdateData using literal values for update
• [CORE-1408] – NVarcharType on Derby Fails
• [CORE-1413] – NPE in changeSetExecuted precondition in changelog-level preconditions
• [CORE-1414] – Improve error handling in empty databasechangeloglock tables
• [CORE-1417] – generateChangeLog failed
• [CORE-1418] – Foreign Key changes not detected in snapshot process

Features

• [CORE-1241] – Remove schema name from SQL generated when running updateSQL

Improvements

• [CORE-1412] – UpdateSQL should write to stdout not stderr