beam-migrate-0.5.2.0: SQL DDL support and migrations support library for Beam
Safe HaskellSafe-Inferred
LanguageHaskell2010

Database.Beam.Migrate

Description

Top-level module import for beam-migrate.

This is most often the only module you want to import, unless you're extending beam-migrate, implementing migrations support in a backend, or writing tooling. If you are doing any of these things, please see the Advanced features section below.

The key abstractions in beam-migrate are the checked database and the migration.

Checked databases

A checked database is similar to the DatabaseSettings type from beam-core except it comes with a set of predicates. Whereas a DatabaseSettings object consists of a set of database entities, a checked database (represented by the CheckedDatabaseSettings type) consists of a set of database entities along with a set of predicates (represented by types implementing DatabasePredicate). The predicates are facts about a given database schema. For example, a checked database with a table named Customers, would have a TableExistsPredicate in its predicate set.

Predicates can be used to verify that a given beam schema is compatible with a backend database or to generate migrations from a schema satisfying one set of predicates to a schema satisfying another. Beam migrate provides a solver for figuring out the exact sequence of steps needed to accomplish this. Beam backends can provide additional predicates and solvers to implement backend-specific migrations. For example, the beam-postgres backend provides predicates to assert that extensions have been loaded, and solvers for emitting proper CREATE EXTENSION statements where appropriate.

Predicates may also be serialized to disk in JSON format, providing an easy means to detect significant changes in a beam schema.

As one final point, beam-migrate can generate schemas in any beam-supported SQL DDL syntax. The beam-migrate module provides a DDL syntax for Haskell in Database.Beam.Haskell.Syntax. This allows beam-migrate to translate predicate sets into the corresponding Haskell schema and the corresponding Haskell migration script. This reflection allows tools based off of beam-migrate to support schema generation from an existing database.

For more information on checked databases, see the Database.Beam.Migrate.Checks module.

Migrations

A migration is a value of type 'MigrationSteps a b', where a and b are database types. Conceptually, a value of this type is a list of DDL commands which can be used to bring a database of type a to a database of type b. For example, if b is a database type containing all the tables as a, but with a new table added, a migration with type 'MigrationSteps a b' may represent a SQL CREATE TABLE statement. Migrations can sometimes be reversed to produce a value of type 'MigrationSteps b a'. In our example, the corresponding reversed migration may be the appropriate DROP TABLE statement.

Migration steps can used to modify a database schema, generate a migration script in a given backend syntax, or generate an appropriate DatabaseSettings object for use with the rest of the beam ecosystem.

For more information in migrations see Database.Beam.Migrate.Types

Syntax

For low-level access to the underlying SQL syntax builders, see Database.Beam.Migrate.SQL.SQL92

Advanced features

If you are writing a new beam backend, you will need to construct a value of type BeamBackend. See that module for more information.

If you are writing tooling, you will likely need to consume BeamBackend. You will likely also be interested in the migration generation. See the documentation on heuristicSolver.

Documentation