Connect Liquibase with MariaDB Server

Last updated: July 14, 2025

MariaDB delivers operational agility with key enterprise features, including real ACID compliance and full SQL. It provides two solutions:

MariaDB Platform, which includes an open-source database solution—MariaDB Server along with ColumnStore and MaxScale.

Note: MariaDB Xpand is not currently supported.

MariaDB Cloud (or MariaDB SkySQL), which is a cloud database service (DBaaS) that delivers MariaDB Platform on the expert-maintained cloud infrastructure from MariaDB Corporation.

You can also use MariaDB on Amazon RDS. For more information about MariaDB, see the MariaDB Knowledge Base.

Verified database versions

  • 11.4 (LTS)

  • 10.6 (LTS)

Download the driver

Before you begin

  • Install Liquibase.

  • Ensure you have Java installed. Liquibase requires Java to run. If you used the Liquibase Installer, Java is included automatically. Otherwise, you must install Java manually.

  • If you use Liquibase Pro, or a Liquibase Pro extension, confirm that you have a valid license key.

Procedure

1

Install drivers

The latest version of Liquibase has a pre-installed driver for this database in the $LIQUIBASE_HOME/internal/lib directory, so you don't need to install it yourself.

If you prefer, you can use environment variables to point to the directory where Liquibase is installed on your machine. You can set environment variables using your operating system's shell. The location of $LIQUIBASE_HOME will depend on where Liquibase was installed on your machine.

Note for Maven users: If you're running Liquibase using the Maven plugin using mvn liquibase:update, installing the extension with Maven ensures the right files are available and everything works together automatically. You can manage these extensions by adding them as dependencies in your project’s pom.xml file. Configuring Maven this way ensures that the necessary JAR files are retrieved from Maven Central during the build phase.

2

Configure your connection

  • Check the status of the database by running the SHOW [GLOBAL | SESSION] STATUS command.

  • Specify the database URL in the Liquibase properties file, as follows: url: jdbc:mariadb://<host>:<port>/<dbname>

3

Test your connection

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

If you already created a changelog using the init project command, you can use that instead of creating a new file. When adding onto an existing changelog, be sure to only add the changeset and to not duplicate the changelog header.

--liquibase formatted sql
--changeset your.name:1
CREATE TABLE test_table (
  test_id INT NOT NULL,
  test_column INT,
  PRIMARY KEY (test_id) NOT ENFORCED
)

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

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

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

If your connection is successful, you'll see a message like this:

4 changesets have not been applied to <your_connection_url> Liquibase command 'status' was executed successfully.

3. Inspect the deployment SQL with the update-sql command

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

If the SQL that Liquibase generates isn't what you expect, you should review your changelog file and make any necessary adjustments.

4. Then execute these changes to your database with the update command:

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

If your update is successful, Liquibase runs each changeset and displays a summary message ending with:

Liquibase: Update has been successful. Liquibase command 'update' was executed successfully.

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