A Year in Review: Liquibase Community 2021

In 2021, we celebrated an epic milestone — 15 years of Liquibase! What began in 2006 as a small personal side project by Nathan Voxland has now been downloaded over 75 million times by users in more than 139 countries. We wouldn’t be here today without the people who continue to contribute to the community whether it’s through extending Liquibase or offering support to fellow users.

We could write a very lengthy book about the past 15 years, but we’ll keep it short and sweet by diving into a single chapter that summarizes all of our favorite things that happened in 2021.

Liquibase Legends – Our Top Contributors

To all who have joined Liquibase Legends in this past year, thank you! Your contributions have made a remarkable impact on our community. Learn more about our top supporters and developers.

Top Supporters

Rakhi Agrawal

402 Points

Rahki has consistently provided support in the Liquibase Forum.

Daryl Doak

232 Points

Daryl has consistently provided support in the Liquibase Forum.

Artem Zagnitko

132 Points

Artem has consistently provided support in StackOverflow.

Top Developers

Alexandru Slobodcicov

516 Points

Alexandru has made significant contributions to the MongoDB and CosmosDB extensions.

Florent Biville

396 Points

Florent has made significant contributions to the Neo4j extension.

Andreas Dangel

276 Points

Andreas has made significant contributions to the Percona extension.

Community-Contributed Extensions in 2021

The following list of extensions had the most activity in 2021. Thank you to the developers who continue to make them better for the community!

Top 5 Community Improvements

• Quality Checks for Database Changes
  Quality checks allow you to run checks against changelogs and SQL scripts by flagging conditions and configurations you need. Liquibase quality checks were derived from 15 years of usage across thousands of users, dozens of database management systems, and a myriad of technology stacks. Learn more about quality checks
  
• Liquibase Test Harness
  We’ve implemented a new test automation platform that will increase the rate that support is added for new databases. This framework enables the community to expand Liquibase database support through development and validation. Check out Liquibase Test Harness on Github.
  
• ​​Liquibase Hub Updates – DevOps Metrics & Pipelines
  The latest release of Liquibase Hub introduces the DevOps Metrics for pipelines to provide data to help you optimize your DevOps performance: Deployment Frequency, Change Migration Time, Change Failure Rate, Time to Fix Failing Changes. Learn more about DevOps Metrics.
  
• Liquibase Package Manager Utility
  Liquibase Package Manager (lpm) is a utility that simplifies the Liquibase installation process by fetching and installing any JDBC drivers and extensions you need. You’ll never see the “Unexpected error running Liquibase: Cannot find database driver” again. Check out lpm on Github.
• Liquibase Data
  Liquibase Data is an enhancement to Liquibase that allows users to version data in the database and easily share it with other team members. Think of it as “Git for data.” The powerful combination of Liquibase to manage database schema and stored logic along with the Liquibase Data extension to manage data makes working with databases so much easier. Explore Liquibase Data in Github.

Top 5 Tech Talks & Webinars

• Best Practices for Working With Teams in Liquibase
  Expert insights into best practices and strategies for developers and database change creators using Liquibase to easily manage database schema changes.
  
• Best Practices for Managing Liquibase Changelogs
  Liquibase Project Founder, Nathan Voxland and the community team discuss best practices for getting started and managing Liquibase changelogs.
  
• Tips & Tricks for Using Liquibase with Docker
  Learn more about how Liquibase users can take advantage of using Docker.
  
• Top Takeaways From the 2021 DORA State of DevOps Report
  The full report is always worth a read, but if you don’t have time to dive into the data, we’ve got you covered in this webinar with the top things you need to know.
  
• Building Trustworthy Database Environments
  Director of Solutions Architecture, Dan Zentgraf, walks through specific use cases for how to inspect your databases automatically using Liquibase so your team can integrate these important security practices to deliver quality database releases reliably and safely.

Top 5 Content we ❤️

• Deploying to MongoDB with Octopus Deploy and Liquibase -Shawn Sesna
• What is Liquibase and How To Start Using It? -Rafal Grzegorczyk
• Managing Database Migrations With Liquibase and Spring Boot -Nelida Velazque
• How to Integrate Amazon RDS Schema Changes into CI/CD Pipelines with GitLab and Liquibase -Jeff Pell
• The Developer-DB Love-Hate Relationship -Ember Crooks

New Liquibase University Courses

• Liquibase Commands for Troubleshooting
  Gain a deeper understanding of all the available Liquibase commands and their practical application for troubleshooting purposes. It includes topics such as using commands for preventing and recovering from common errors, monitoring your deployments, and database migrations.
  
• Liquibase and the CI/CD Process
  Learn the basics of using Liquibase in the CI/CD process. It includes topics such as using automation tools with Liquibase, testing and embedding Liquibase in your automation process.
  
• Introduction to Liquibase Test Harness
  For users who wish to learn how to utilize the Liquibase Test Harness for their specific use, check out our new course in Liquibase University. The course includes how to execute the test harness, how to create a test, and how to run tests for different database platforms.
  
• Common Liquibase Design Patterns
  This course reviews five real-world Liquibase design patterns, including how to address database drift, utilize property substitution in a Liquibase project, and how Liquibase is used in a state, migration, or hybrid approach for database deployments.

Onward to 2022!

We’re hiring a Developer Advocate!

Want to join the Liquibase community team? We’re searching for a Developer Advocate to represent the voice of the Open Source Community within Liquibase. This is a fully remote role and we encourage applicants from anywhere in the world.

This is what you’ll do:

• Provide the developer communities with whatever is needed, focusing on documentation, support, workflow tips, and code
• Proactively develop technical content that generates long-term impact for our fast-growing developer community
• Develop a structured and scalable approach to working with all community roles, community onboarding, and developers to ensure an effective experience
• Define and execute engaging programs that grow our community and empower contributors to be the best they can be and do great work
• Build authentic relationships across multiple industries and communities to help foster collaboration
• Inform the roadmaps of Product, Engineering, and Marketing teams to include features the community needs

Thank you to all who have continued to support and contribute to Liquibase. As always, hop over to our community page to learn more about how to get involved.

See you next month with more updates!