dbForge SQL Tools vs. Liquibase

dbForge SQL Complete is well suited for professionals that have to write code all day. In my role in the business intelligence department we are writing SQL pretty much all day. Having a tool that helps us do that faster, in a cleaner way is pretty awesome and something that pays for itself quickly.

Incentivized

Based on my experience so far on using Liquibase in my current project, I have seen that Liquibase changelogs are version control where multiple team members and developers can work together on database and deployed automatically via CI/CD Pipeline integration using github actions and it applies same changelogs to all enviroments to remain in sync and avoid any enviroment drift. Also as Liquibase stores changelog audits in DATABASECHANGELOG table it helps in tracking purposes and to easily rollback any change . Whereas in some scenarios I feel that Liquibase have some drawbacks where if complex transformation between tables is not optimized for bulk data operations which eventually degrades database performance.

Incentivized

• SQL complete allows you to create custom snippets that allow you to store frequently ran queries in shortcuts. The code can be populated within seconds!
• Another great benefit is custom aliases. If you frequently reference the same tables over and over again it gets tiresome to retype the aliases. Storing these can make your code more consistent and save time.
• SQL complete will also highlight the metadata within your database. For example, if you start typing an insert statement you populate code for all the field names by pressing the tab. This is a real-time saver for wide tables!

Incentivized

• Liquibase tracks changes in a metadata table contained directly in the target database, making easy administration for the DBA.
• Liquibase handles many validation tests out of the box, making it easy to choose which ones you want to include, with options for writing your own if you choose. This makes it robust and flexible in terms of validation before deployment.
• Liquibase provides easy integration into deployment pipelines for CI/CD. We use it with GitHub for source control and Circle CI for validation and deployment pipelines.

Incentivized

• Sometimes it can be slow to retrieve the database metadata.
• Updating the software with the activation/deactivation of licenses could be further streamlined.

Incentivized

• I would like Liquibase to explore all errors in the changelog files compared to one at a time. We spent a lot of time troubleshooting one error at a time versus having a batch log of errors in each file.
• Understanding where to get support on things. I spent a lot of time researching externally to learn what the best practices were. Although I found some of the youtube videos helpful, I would like a little more of a technical support. This may be a feature with the paid tier, however, we leveraged open source.
• Seeing more examples of how others use Liquibase and their usecases will be helpful. That way we can learn from each other which may help us improve on our own deployments.

Incentivized

We are and will continue using Liquibase and it has become an integral part of our portfolio offering, any new product is by default adopting Liquibase stack.

Incentivized

Build process is too time consuming and getting extra DB instance takes a toll

Incentivized

Liquibase has been responsive and even is letting our group test some new products they are developing and even made code changes to their production system because of a couple bugs we have reported. Liquibase licensing has also been easy and simple. I have nothing bad to say about any of the Liquibase staff I have talked to. They also hold free information webinars for new content that helps spread adoption and moving the product forward.

Incentivized

the database deployments helped us with increased productivity,
faster delivery and low risk.

Incentivized

I am very satisfied after using this tool. It is a full-stack tool that includes rich features that can be customized set of functionality as per your need. by using this tool:-

• Increased our productivity rate.
• Provides speed up your development work so you can focus on other stuff.

There is no real competitor when it comes to what Liquibase does - at least not at the time we considered it three years ago. It was an easy choice in this regard, but we could have said no to it if it made our workload more difficult. But our proof of concept showed there were easy wins to be had by implementing its software.

Incentivized

• Spending less time trying to figure out how tables are related thanks to the navigational help in dbForge SQL Complete, which means fixing issues takes less time.

Incentivized

• We need to re-educate developers to use Liquibase.
• In some cases, it is hard to align when several teams work on the same DB.
• On the other hand, Liquibase provides order and consistency in managing DB changes.
• Evidence and traceability are a plus.

Incentivized