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Must have tool for DevOps
December 08, 2022

Must have tool for DevOps

Ming Li | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Liquibase Pro

Overall Satisfaction with Liquibase

We use liquibase to help manage database versioning associated with application versioning. When we update our software application, sometimes, there are associated database changes that need to be applied. One key requirement in our business is that we need to be very agile to meet the rapid needs of our end users. Having liquibase allows us to be agile and deliver high quality app. Liquibase also ensures the integrity of database with respect to application. When we deploy a new application, we bake liquibase into our CI/CD so that any database changes are applied together with application deployment.
  • easy to use
  • easy to onboard new developers
  • works as intended
  • easy to manage
  • works well with CI/CD tools
  • too much initial configuration in some places
  • documentation lacking on some aspects
  • limited support
  • less downtime
  • faster deployments
  • less manual effort required in deployments
  • more reliable service
Liquibase greatly enhanced our organization's database admin experience. Not only do we now provide more reliable service, but many of our database administration activities is greatly reduced since the implementation of liquibase. Liquibase greatly reduced the amount of documentation and reports necessary to maintain our applications as developers can just read the liquibase changelogs to understand any database changes. This reduction in technical debt also resulted in faster change cycles and happier customers.
I have not needed to use liquibase support for liquibase already has a good documentation ecosystem. Existing liquibase documentation is useful for new developers to pick up liquibase and also the set up of liquibase is extremely simple. Much of the effort needed to maintain liquibase in our apps is writing rollback statements. Although liquibase provides auto-generated rollback statements if you use its xml syntax, but its xml syntax requires a learning curve and so we only use original SQL in our changesets. The downside of using SQL is that you have to write your own rollback statements if you want to use liquibase's rollback feature.
Both liquibase and Flyway help you deploy database changes associated with new application deployments. They will both help with reducing database administration tasks and ensure reliability of the application service. Comparing Liquibase and Flyway, I found liquibase to be easier to learn and faster to implement than Flyway. Liquibase is also more flexible than Flyway. With Flyway, you have to use SQL statements where as in liquibase you can use SQL, XML, etc. If you use XML in Liquibase, it will auto-generate rollback statements, which is definitely a plus if you want to save some time writing rollback statements.

Do you think Liquibase delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Liquibase's feature set?

Yes

Did Liquibase live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Liquibase go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Liquibase again?

Yes

Liquibase is suited if you have a database and the application you write is highly dependent on that database. If your application doesn't require a database, then you don't need liquibase. You should only use liquibase to apply database changes that are associate with any application change. If you want to apply a change to database to resolve a production incident without changing the application, then you should not be using liquibase.