Database Migration Patterns

Safe, zero-downtime database migration strategies — schema evolution, rollback planning, data migration, tooling, and anti-pattern avoidance for production systems. Use when planning schema changes, writing migrations, or reviewing migration safety.

What's Inside

• Schema Evolution Strategies — additive-only, expand-contract, parallel change, lazy migration
• Zero-Downtime Patterns — add column, rename column, drop column, change type, add index, split table, change constraint, add enum value
• Migration Tools — Prisma, Knex, Drizzle, Alembic, Django, Flyway, golang-migrate, Atlas
• Rollback Strategies — reversible, forward-only, hybrid approaches
• Data Preservation — soft-delete, snapshot tables, point-in-time recovery, logical backups
• Blue-Green Database pattern
• Data Migration Patterns — backfill strategies, batch processing, dual-write period
• Testing Migrations — production-like data, migration CI pipeline
• Migration Checklist — pre-migration, during, and post-migration steps

When to Use

• Planning schema changes for production databases
• Writing safe, zero-downtime migrations
• Choosing a migration tool for your stack
• Reviewing migration safety before deployment
• Handling data migrations and backfills on large tables
• Setting up migration CI pipelines

Installation

npx add https://github.com/wpank/ai/tree/main/skills/api/database-migrations

Manual Installation

Cursor (per-project)

From your project root:

mkdir -p .cursor/skills
cp -r ~/.ai-skills/skills/api/database-migrations .cursor/skills/database-migrations

Cursor (global)

mkdir -p ~/.cursor/skills
cp -r ~/.ai-skills/skills/api/database-migrations ~/.cursor/skills/database-migrations

Claude Code (per-project)

From your project root:

mkdir -p .claude/skills
cp -r ~/.ai-skills/skills/api/database-migrations .claude/skills/database-migrations

Claude Code (global)

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r ~/.ai-skills/skills/api/database-migrations ~/.claude/skills/database-migrations

Related Skills

• api-versioning — API versioning often accompanies schema migrations
• api-development — Database migrations as part of the API development lifecycle

Part of the API skill category.