Hi Rajani,

Indeed I see the overlap with the previous discussion that is taking place. I 
actually tried to chip-in that discussion.
I do agree with you on introducing tools that can support the database upgrade 
process, but meanwhile a small change in the way developers maintain the 
database related code could already bring us very far.

As of now I'm working on a separate project with the following roadmap:
- detect potential conflicts (and collect data about them)
- learn from the data collected which conflicts can we resolve automatically, 
which we cannot
- for the conflicts that we cannot resolve automatically, provide some guidance 
to the operator on how proceed with the upgrade

I'm working on a repository that is not accessible from the outside of Schuberg 
Philis, but the intention is to move it to github.com ASAP.

I'm very interested in aligning efforts with the rest of the community, and I'm 
available to help out in whatever is decided. Meanwhile, I will continue to 
develop the ideas we have, and anyone interested in helping out with that is 
very welcome.

If you have any ideas on how to collaborate, please let me know.

Cheers,
Miguel

-----Original Message-----
From: Rajani Karuturi [mailto:rajani.karut...@citrix.com] 
Sent: dinsdag 11 maart 2014 7:19
To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org
Cc: Alex Huang
Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Enabling databse upgrades on master branch

Hi Miguel,

This is in-line with discussions related to db changes we are having at [1] and 
[2]

I think it would be better to use existing tools like [liquibase] or [flyway] 
instead of writing a new one. A good comparison of the both is available at [3].

Also, how do we join the efforts? Is there any design doc? Are you working on a 
separate branch or as separate project?


[1] http://markmail.org/message/r7wv36o356nolq7f
[2] http://markmail.org/message/wlua3l4o5shayidf
[liquibase] http://www.liquibase.org/
[flyway] http://flywaydb.org/
[3] http://stackoverflow.com/a/8489144/201514


~Rajani



On 10-Mar-2014, at 8:35 pm, Miguel Ferreira 
<mferre...@schubergphilis.com<mailto:mferre...@schubergphilis.com>> wrote:

Hi all,

At Schuberg Philis we are interested in upgrading our running installation of 
ACS more frequently than the current release cycle.
To that end, we are working on tooling to detect potentially conflict 
introducing changes to the ACS database and upgrade software.
By conflict introducing change I mean a change to ACS that requires a clean 
database to start with. Thus, rendering a database of a running installation 
useless.
Once we can detect the changes that introduce conflicts, we will start to 
monitor them to better understand how to mitigate and possibly work around the 
conflicts.

One thing we can already foresee as problematic is the way the upgrade software 
(SQL scripts and Java classes) are being maintained. It is part of the current 
way-of-working to make all kinds of changes to the upgrade software in the 
master branch. Say, if a create statement was introduced in a SQL script in 
commit C1, then the same create statement might be changed in commit C2, or 
even further down the line. If we want to continuously upgrade our running 
installation, we would not be able to upgrade past C1 without at least losing 
some data. One possible way out of this problem is to add an alter statement in 
C2 instead of changing the create statement introduced in C1.

We are in favor of all changes to the upgrade software being made in such a way 
that they can be applied independently and incrementally. We do realize that 
this entails more effort from developers, but we also see the benefit of 
enabling continuous delivery: we basically get a shorter feedback loop on the 
quality of ACS in a real-world scenario.

We are making all tools related to this open source, so anyone that shares the 
same interest is welcome to join the effort.
Lastly, we would like to hear your opinions about the issue I described, as 
well as, the proposed solution and any other solutions you might come up with.


Kind regards,
Miguel Ferreira

Mission Critical Engineer
Schuberg Philis
Boeingavenue 271
1119 PD Schiphol-Rijk
schubergphilis.com<http://schubergphilis.com>

+31 207506617
+31 610907106
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