Skip to main content

Atlas v0.34: Ad-hoc Approval Policies and Terraform Docs

· 3 min read
Rotem Tamir
Rotem Tamir
Building Atlas

Hey everyone!

It's been just over two weeks since our last release, and we are back with another batch of exciting features and improvements. Here's what's in store for you in Atlas v0.34.

As we announced in our previous release we have kicked off a beta feedback program to help us improve the driver and the overall user experience. If you are interested in taking part, please fill this short form:

Beta Feedback Program

Ad-hoc Approval Policies for Terraform and GitHub Actions​

Declarative migrations give teams a powerful, automated way to manage database schemas, but even the safest automation still requires human oversight at times.

Using the schema/plan action, Atlas already provides a way for teams to review and approve schema changes during the Pull Request process. This is a great way to ensure that schema changes are reviewed and approved before they are applied to the database. However, this is not always enough.

In some cases, when you declaratively apply changes to your database, the resulting plan may be different from what was approved in the Pull Request. This can happen when the database schema is modified outside of Atlas, or when recovering from a failure. In these cases, it is important to ensure that the changes are still safe and approved before they are applied to the database.

By default, when applying schemas via the Schema Registry, Atlas will block the apply if it does not find an approved plan. This is a good default, but it can be too strict for some teams and lead to unnecessary "break the glass" moments.

We introduced Ad-hoc Approvals to the CLI and Kubernetes operator to address this on v0.29. Today, we are happy to close the loop and provide the same functionality for Terraform and GitHub Actions

Terraform Documentation​

Making the Atlas docs clear and easy to follow is something our team spends a lot of time on. Most recently, we revamped the Terraform documentation to make it clearer and easier to get started.

Here, you can find step-by-step guides for setting up Terraform with the Atlas Terraform Provider integration, performing versioned and declarative migrations with Terraform, and using our new ad-hoc approval policies feature with Terraform as previously described.

Wrapping Up​

We hope you enjoy the new features and improvements. As always, we would love to hear your feedback and suggestions on our Discord server.