Using Liquibase with AWS Redshift

Amazon Web Services Redshift is a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud. An AWS Redshift data warehouse is a collection of computing resources called nodes. The nodes are organized into a group called a cluster. Each cluster runs an AWS Redshift engine and contains one or more databases. For more information, see the Amazon Redshift documentation page.

Supported versions

• 3.0.28

Verification level

Compatible: Reported to work by the community. May have partially passed Foundational-level testing.

Note: A database's verification level indicates how well it works with different features in Liquibase and across different products, such as Liquibase Community and Liquibase Pro. For more information, see Liquibase Database Tutorials.

Prerequisites

• Install Liquibase.
• Create a Liquibase project folder to store all Liquibase files. You can do this manually or with the init project command.
• Create a new Liquibase properties file or use the liquibase.properties file included in the installation package. For more information, see Specifying Properties in a Connection Profile.

Install drivers

To use Liquibase and AWS Redshift, you need two jar files: JDBC and the Liquibase Redshift extension:

1. Download the Amazon Redshift JDBC 4.2–compatible driver (without the AWS SDK) from Amazon or Maven. If you use the Amazon Redshift JDBC driver for database authentication, ensure you have AWS SDK for Java 1.11.118 or later in your Java class path. If you don't have AWS SDK for Java installed, download the ZIP file with the JDBC 4.2–compatible driver (without the AWS SDK) and driver dependent libraries for the AWS SDK: redshift-jdbc<version>.jar.
2. Go to the liquibase-redshift repository and download the latest released Liquibase extension liquibase-redshift-<version>.jar file.

Place your JAR file(s) in the liquibase/lib directory. Read more: Adding and Updating Liquibase Drivers.

If you use Maven, you must include the driver JAR as a dependency in your pom.xml file. Read more: Configuring Liquibase Attributes in your Maven POM File.

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.amazon.redshift</groupId>
    <artifactId>redshift-jdbc42</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.0.4</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.liquibase.ext</groupId>
    <artifactId>liquibase-redshift</artifactId>
    <version>4.16.1</version>
</dependency>

Make sure that the Liquibase plugin and the extension have the same version.

Test your connection

1. Ensure your AWS Redshift database is configured. You can check the connection to an Amazon Redshift cluster.
2. Specify the database URL in the Liquibase properties file. Liquibase does not parse the URL. You can either specify the full database connection string or specify the URL using your database's standard JDBC format:

url: jdbc:redshift://endpoint:port/database

Example: url: jdbc:redshift://<cluster-identifier>.us-east-1.redshift.amazonaws.com:5439/databasename

Note: To get your JDBC connection, see Finding your cluster connection string.

Tip: To apply a Liquibase Pro key to your project, add the following property to the Liquibase properties file: liquibaseProLicenseKey: <paste code here>

3. Create a text file called changelog (.xml, .sql, .json, or .yaml) in your project directory and add a changeset.
XML example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<databaseChangeLog
	xmlns="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns:ext="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog-ext"
	xmlns:pro="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/pro"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog
		http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog/dbchangelog-latest.xsd
		http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog-ext http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog/dbchangelog-ext.xsd
		http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/pro http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/pro/liquibase-pro-latest.xsd">
    <changeSet id="1" author="Liquibase">
    <createTable tableName="test_table">
           <column name="test_id" type="int">
                 <constraints primaryKey="true"/>
           </column>
           <column name="test_column" type="varchar"/>
    </createTable>
    </changeSet>
</databaseChangeLog>

SQL example

-- liquibase formatted sql

-- changeset liquibase:1
CREATE TABLE test_table (test_id INT, test_column VARCHAR(256), PRIMARY KEY (test_id))

Tip: Formatted SQL changelogs generated from Liquibase versions before 4.2 might cause issues because of the lack of space after a double dash ( -- ). To fix this, add a space after the double dash. For example: -- liquibase formatted sql instead of --liquibase formatted sql and -- changeset myname:create-table instead of --changeset myname:create-table

YAML example

databaseChangeLog:
   - changeSet:
       id: 1
       author: Liquibase
       changes:
       - createTable:
           columns:
           - column:
               name: test_column
               type: INT
               constraints:  
                   primaryKey:  true  
                   nullable:  false  
                   tableName: test_table

JSON example

{ 
  "databaseChangeLog": [
  {
	"changeSet": {
	  "id": "1",
      "author": "Liquibase",
	  "changes": [
	    {
		  "createTable": {
		    "columns": [
			{
			  "column": 
		      {
				"name": "test_column",
				"type": "INT",
				"constraints": 
			  {
				"primaryKey": true,
				"nullable": false
				}
				}
			  }]
			,
			"tableName": "test_table"
		  }
		}]
	  }
	}]
  }

4. Navigate to your project folder in the CLI and run the Liquibase status command to see whether the connection is successful:

liquibase --username=test --password=test --changelog-file=<changelog.xml> status

Note: You can pass arguments in the CLI or keep them in the Liquibase properties file.

5. Inspect the SQL with the update-sql command. Then make changes to your database with the update command.

liquibase --changelog-file=<changelog.xml> update-sql
liquibase --changelog-file=<changelog.xml> update

6. From a database UI tool, ensure that your database contains the test_table you added along with the DATABASECHANGELOG table and DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table.

Related links

• Getting started with Amazon Redshift
• Liquibase Change Types
• Liquibase Commands
• Workflows