Database Migration - CI/CD Glossary Definition

A database migration is a versioned, ordered change to a database schema or data, applied by a tool (Flyway, Liquibase, Alembic, Rails, Prisma) so every environment ends up in the same state.

In CI/CD

Migrations are checked into source control alongside code and run automatically during deploy, so the schema advances in lockstep with the application. CI typically runs pending migrations against a throwaway database before the test suite.

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