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Migration Directory Integrity File

Applying changes to a database schema in the wrong order can be dangerous. For this reason, Atlas is built on a workflow that enforces a linear history using a migration directory integrity file.

The problem​

Suppose you have multiple teams working on a system simultaneously, all of which need to make changes to the database schema from time to time. Unless they somehow coordinate, they may end up with a broken migration directory.

Consider what would happen if Team A and B, working in parallel, both merge a migration that creates a new table named inventory. This is illustrated in this diagram:

Teams committing migrations in parallel. Source: Ent blog

Something like this might happen:

  1. Team A creates a feature branch, committing a migration creating the inventory table.
  2. Team B creates a second feature branch, also creating a table by the same name.
  3. Both branches pass code-review and continuous integration.
  4. Team A's branch is merged to the mainline branch.
  5. Team B's branch is merged.
  6. When both changes are deployed, the first one to run will succeed and the second will fail. This will happen in an arbitrary order (migrations are run in lexicographic order, usually set by the timestamp on the developer's workstation when generating them).

The solution​

Recovering from a failed migration is quite a headache, so wouldn't it be great to prevent this from ever happening?

Code conflicts are usually detected by source-control systems (such as Git) when the same line in the same file is modified by two different commits. In our case, no such conflict happens because migrations are typically described in a separate file for each migration.

Atlas's engine offers a way to prevent concurrent creation of new migration files and guards against accidental changes in the migration history we call Migration Directory Integrity File. This file is simply another file in your migration directory called atlas.sum and looks something like:

h1:KRFsSi68ZOarsQAJZ1mfSiMSkIOZlMq4RzyF//Pwf8A=
20220318104614_team_A.sql h1:EGknG5Y6GQYrc4W8e/r3S61Aqx2p+NmQyVz/2m8ZNwA=

The atlas.sum file contains the checksum of each migration file (implemented by a reverse, one branch merkle hash tree), and a sum of all files. Adding new files results in a change to the sum file, which will raise merge conflicts in most version control systems.

How does this mechanism prevent situations like the one we described above?​

The migration directory integrity file is updated automatically whenever a new migration is created. Therefore, after Team A merged their changes to the mainline branch, Team B would not be able to do so without dealing with the changes landed by Team B.

Because of the merge conflict on the atlas.sum file, in order to land their changes, Team B would need to:

  1. Merge the latest changes into their branch
  2. Resolve any conflicts on the database schema (and application) level
  3. Re-compute the atlas.sum file (using the atlas migrate hash) command.
  4. Merge their changes to the mainline branch.