by Horatiu Dan
Abstract“Idempotence is the property of certain operations in mathematics and computer science whereby they can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the initial application” [Resource 3].
The purpose of this article is to outline a few ways of creating idempotent changes when the database modifications are managed with Liquibase. Throughout the life time of a software product that has such tier, various database modifications are being applied as it evolves. The more robust the modifications are, the more maintainable the solution is. In order to accomplish such a way of working, it is usually a good practice to design the executed change sets to have zero side effects, that is to be able to be run as many times as needed with the same end result.
The simple proof of concept built here aims to show case how Liquibase change sets may be written to be idempotent. Moreover, the article explains in mo...