How to use diff in multiple schemas in Liquibase
Last updated: July 14, 2025
You can diff multiple schemas to capture the changes made by a few people in their database environments and add those changes into a release artifact so they can be deployed in the existing release automation.
Liquibase allows you to handle multiple schemas with the following commands:
diff
diff-
generate-changelog
snapshot
Procedure
Run the snapshot command to capture the state of the database containing different schemas:
liquibase --output-file=mySnapshot.json snapshot --snapshot-format=json --schemas=lookup,public
When running the snapshot command on multiple schemas, enter the --schemas flag after the snapshot command.
Example properties file:
changelog-file: myChangelog.xml
url: offline:postgresql=//localhost:5432/MYDATABASE
username: postgres
password: password
classpath: ../../Drivers/postgresql-42.2.8.jar
licenseKey: <ProKey>
includeSchema: true
Manually make some changes to the target database on the different schemas.
Run the diff command specifying the snapshot (an offline mode) and the database with new changes:
liquibase diff
--url=offline:postgresql?snapshot=mySnapshot.json
--referenceUrl="jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/MYDATABASE"
--referenceUsername=<USERNAME>
--referencePassword=<PASSWORD>
Note: The format for the URL is the following: offline:<db>?snapshot=<path/to/snapshot.json>. Use the name of your database type from the list of the supported databases in place of <db> and the path relative to where the command is running in place of <path/to/snapshot.json>. If you are using another database, like H2, you may need to wrap your URL in ": "offline:<db_type>?snapshot=<path/to/snapshot.json>".
Run the diff-changelog command specifying the snapshot (an offline mode) and the database with new changes:
liquibase diff-changelog
--url=offline:postgresql?snapshot=mySnapshot.json
--referenceUrl=jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/MYDATABASE
--changelog-file=mydiffchangelog.xml
The generated changelog contains changes that you can compare and confirm.