Secure 5.1: Connect Liquibase with Amazon Redshift

Connect Liquibase with Amazon Redshift

Last updated: November 18, 2025

Amazon Redshift is a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud. An Amazon 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 Amazon Redshift engine and contains one or more databases. For more information, see the Amazon Redshift documentation page.

Verified database versions

Cloud

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.

Procedure

(Maven users only) Configure Maven

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.

Configure your connection

Ensure your database is configured. You can check the connection to an Amazon Redshift cluster.
Specify the database URL in the liquibase.properties file (defaults file), along with other properties you want to set a default value for. Liquibase does not parse the URL. You can either specify the full database connection string or specify the URL using your database's standard connection 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.

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

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)

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

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

<?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:secure="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/secure"
    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/secure
        http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/secure/liquibase-secure-latest.xsd">

    <changeSet id="1" author="your.name">
        <createTable tableName="test_table">
            <column name="test_id" type="int">
                <constraints primaryKey="true" nullable="false" />
            </column>
            <column name="test_column" type="int"/>
        </createTable>
    </changeSet>

</databaseChangeLog>

--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)

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

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

<?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:secure="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/secure"
    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/secure
        http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/secure/liquibase-secure-latest.xsd">

    <changeSet id="1" author="your.name">
        <createTable tableName="test_table">
            <column name="test_id" type="int">
                <constraints primaryKey="true" nullable="false" />
            </column>
            <column name="test_column" type="int"/>
        </createTable>
    </changeSet>

</databaseChangeLog>

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

liquibase status

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

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

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. Verify that the database contains your test_table and the DATABASECHANGELOG, and DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK tables.

Supported Change types

Change type	Supported
addAutoIncrement	Supported
addCheckConstraint	Supported
addColumn	Supported
addDefaultValue	Supported
addForeignKeyConstraint	Supported
addLookupTable	Supported
addNotNullConstraint	Supported
addPrimaryKey	Supported
addUniqueConstraint	Supported
alterSequence	Supported
createFunction	Supported
createIndex	Supported
createPackage	Supported
createPackageBody	Supported
createProcedure	Supported
createSequence	Supported
createSynonym	Supported
createTable	Supported
createTrigger	Supported
createView	Supported
customChange	Supported
delete	Supported
disableCheckConstraint	Supported
disableTrigger	Supported
dropAllForeignKeyConstraints	Supported
dropCheckConstraint	Supported
dropColumn	Supported
dropDefaultValue	Supported
dropForeignKeyConstraint	Supported
dropFunction	Supported
dropIndex	Supported
dropNotNullConstraint	Supported
dropPackage	Supported
dropPackageBody	Supported
dropPrimaryKey	Supported
dropProcedure	Supported
dropSequence	Supported
dropSynonym	Supported
dropTable	Supported
dropTrigger	Supported
dropUniqueConstraint	Supported
dropView	Supported
enableCheckConstraint	Supported
enableTrigger	Supported
executeCommand	Supported
insert	Supported
loadData	Supported
loadUpdateData	Supported
markUnused	Supported
mergeColumns	Supported
modifyDataType	Supported
output	Supported
renameColumn	Supported
renameSequence	Supported
renameTable	Supported
renameTrigger	Supported
renameView	Supported
setColumnRemarks	Supported
setTableRemarks	Supported
sql	Supported
sqlFile	Supported
stop	Supported
tagDatabase	Supported
update	Supported

Supported commands

Command	Supported
calculate-checksum	Supported
changelog-sync	Supported
changelog-sync-sql	Supported
changelog-sync-to-tag	Supported
changelog-sync-to-tag-sql	Supported
clear-checksums	Supported
db-doc	Supported
diff	Not Supported
diff JSON	Not Supported
diff-changelog	Supported
drop-all	Supported
future-rollback-count-sql	Supported
future-rollback-from-tag-sql	Supported
future-rollback-sql	Supported
generate-changelog	Supported
help	Supported
history	Supported
list-locks	Supported
mark-next-changeset-ran	Supported
mark-next-changeset-ran-sql	Supported
release-locks	Supported
rollback	Supported
rollback-count	Supported
rollback-count-sql	Supported
rollback-one-changeset	Supported
rollback-one-changeset-sql	Supported
rollback-one-update	Supported
rollback-one-update-sql	Supported
rollback-sql	Supported
rollback-to-date	Supported
rollback-to-date-sql	Supported
snapshot	Not Supported
snapshot-reference	Not Supported
status	Supported
tag	Supported
tag-exists	Supported
unexpected-changesets	Supported
update	Supported
update-sql	Supported
update-count	Supported
update-count-sql	Supported
update-testing-rollback	Supported
update-to-tag	Supported
update-to-tag-sql	Supported
validate	Supported