Setting up Liquibase with MS-SQL Server

Question

I am utilising Liquibase (www.liquibase.org) into our MVC3 SQL Server 2008 project to manage database migration/changes. However I'm stumbling on the first hurdle: Connecting to Microsoft SQL Server instance.

I am looking at the quick start tutorial on the liquibase site, but exchanging the mysql for sql server DB

I run this command:

liquibase --driver=sqljdbc.jar  --changeLogFile="C:\Temp\ChangeLog.xml"  --url="jdbc:sqlserver://localhost;databaseName=test"  --username=user --password=pass   migrate

And receive this error:

Liquibase Update Failed: Cannot find database driver: sqljdbc.jar

I have tried adding --classpath pointing to the sqljdbc driver with no luck.

How can I create or update an MS-SQL Server database with liquibase?

Permanent

Answer 1

Create a properties file called liquibase.properties containing the following:

classpath=C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver\\sqljdbc_1.2\\enu\\sqljdbc.jar
driver=com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver
url=jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=test
username=myuser
password=mypass
changeLogFile=C:\\Temp\\ChangeLog.xml

liquibase will use this file when located in the same directory. Useful to simplify the command-line.

Database is updated as follows:

liquibase update

Notes:

• I'm not a SQL server user, I picked up the JDBC driver and URL details from Microsoft doco
• The "migrate" command has been deprecated.

Academicism

Brilliant. Thanks a lot Mark. Used the newer mssql jdbc 3.0 driver and added double backslash to locations e.g C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft...... – Permanent

Thanks very much for your help... But I keep asking myself... how they don´t put this kind of info on docs page? – Mogador

Its not advisable to use absolute path for the parameter changeLogFile=C:\\Temp\\ChangeLog.xml because the absolute path will differ from programmer to programmer as he/she chosen. . Liquibase uses the change set ID, author and filename to create a check sum to validate if a change has already been processed. (forum.liquibase.org/topic/…). So, it's better to include directory name in classpath parameter as suggested by @nvoxlandas in the forum mentioned. – Demarco

@ParameshKorrakuti I fully accept your point. The answer is 3 years old, dating back to a time when I was chained to a windows workstation... there I found that explicitly stating the full directory pathname worked more reliably in Java.... Fortunately this is all a dim and distant memory :-) Thank you for your comment – Mateya