DevOps: Database Change Management with MariaDB and GitHub

This is a series of articles about DevOps: Database Change Management with MariaDB

• DevOps: Database Change Management with MariaDB
• DevOps: Database Change Management with MariaDB and GitHub (this one)

In the last article DevOps: Database Change Management with MariaDB, you have tried UI workflow in Bytebase.

This tutorial will bring you to the next level by introducing the GitOps workflow, where you commit the schema change script to the GitHub repository, which will in turn trigger the schema deployment pipeline in Bytebase.

You can use Bytebase free version to finish the tutorial.

Features included

• GitOps Workflow
• Change History

Prerequisites

Before you start this tutorial, make sure:

• You have followed our previous UI-based change tutorial DevOps: Database Change Management with MariaDB.
• You have a GitHub account.
• You have a public GitHub repository, e.g  test-bb-mariadb-gitops.
• You have Docker installed locally.
• You have a ngrok account. ngrok is a reverse proxy tunnel, and in our case, we need it for a public network address in order to receive webhooks from GitHub.com. We use ngrok here for demonstration purposes. For production use, we recommend using Caddy.

Step 1 - Run Bytebase in Docker with URL generated by ngrok

To make local-running Bytebase visible to GitHub, we’ll pass ngrok generated URL to --external-url.

1. Login to ngrok Dashboard and follow its Getting Started steps to install and configure.

2. Run
   

   ngrok http 5678

and obtain the public URL:

1. Make sure your Docker daemon is running, if it’s running Bytebase container for the previous tutorial, there're two ways:

• 1a. Go to Settings > Workspace > General, fill in the External URL field and click Update.
• 1b. Stop and remove it. The data created in the last tutorial is stored under ~/.bytebase/data by default and will be restored if the system restarts. Start the Bytebase Docker container by typing the following command in the terminal. Pay attention to the last parameter --external-url https://1681-149-129-123-75.ngrok-free.app, which is generated by ngrok.

   docker run --init \
   --name bytebase \
   --platform linux/amd64 \
   --restart always \
   --publish 5678:8080 \
   --health-cmd "curl --fail http://localhost:5678/healthz || exit 1" \
   --health-interval 5m \
   --health-timeout 60s \
   --volume ~/.bytebase/data:/var/opt/bytebase \
   bytebase/bytebase:%%bb_version%% \
   --data /var/opt/bytebase \
   --port 8080 \
   --external-url https://1681-149-129-123-75.ngrok-free.app

You can now visit Bytebase via https://70ca-154-9-204-36.ngrok.io/.

Step 2 - Find your MariaDB instance in Bytebase

1. Visit https://70ca-154-9-204-36.ngrok.io/in your browser, and log in using your admin account created from the previous article.

2. Click Projects on the top bar, and then click Create Project. Fill in Demo Git as Project Name, DGT as Key, Standard as Mode and click Create.

3. Go to the Demo Git project, and click New DB.

4. Fill the form with the following information and click Create.

• Name: demo_db_git
• Environment: Test
• Instance: MariaDB test It will create an issue "CREATE DATABASE …" automatically. Because it’s for Test environment, the issue will automatically run then becomes Done. The database is created.

1. Click New DB again, fill the form with the following information and click Create.

• Name: demo_db_git
• Environment: Prod
• Instance: MariaDB prod

It will create an issue "CREATE DATABASE …" automatically. Because it’s for Prod environment, the issue will require manual rollout. Click Rollout to run then becomes Done. The database is created.

Step 3 - Connect Bytebase with GitHub.com

1. Click Settings on the top bar, and then click Workspace > Version Control. Choose GitHub.com and click Next.
   

2. Follow the instructions within STEP 2, and in this tutorial, we will use a personal account instead of an organization account. The configuration is similar.
   

3. Go to your GitHub account. Click Settings on the dropdown menu.
   

4. Click Developer Settings at the bottom of the left side bar. Click OAuth Apps, and click New OAuth App.
   

5. Fill Application name and then copy the Homepage and Authorization callback URL in Bytebase and fill them. Click Register application.

6. After the OAuth application is created successfully. Click Generate a new client secret. Copy Client ID and this newly generated client secret and paste them back in Bytebase.
   
   

7. Click Next. You will be redirected to the confirmation page. Click Confirm and add, and the Git provider is successfully added.
   

Step 4 - Enable GitOps workflow with MariaDB

1. Go to project Demo Git, click GitOps, and choose GitOps Workflow. Click Configure GitOps.
   

2. Choose GitHub.com - the provider you just added. It will display all the repositories you can manipulate. Choose test-bb-mariadb-gitops.

3. Keep the default setting, and click Finish. The GitOps workflow is successfully enabled.
   

Step 5 - Change schema for MariaDB by pushing SQL schema change files to GitHub

1. In your GitHub repository test-bb-mariadb-gitops, create a folder bytebase, then create a subfolder prod, and create an sql file following the pattern {{ENV_ID}}/{{DB_NAME}}##{{VERSION}}##{{TYPE}}##{{DESCRIPTION}}.sql. It is the default configuration for file path template setting under project version control.

prod/demo_git_db##2023061614300000##ddl##create_t2.sql

• prod corresponds to {{ENV_ID}}
• demo_git_db corresponds to {{DB_NAME}}
• 2023061614300000 corresponds to {{VERSION}}
• ddl corresponds to {{TYPE}}
• create_t2 corresponds to {{DESCRIPTION}}

Paste the sql script in it.

   CREATE TABLE t2(
   id INT NOT NULL,
   PRIMARY KEY(id)
   )

1. Commit and push this file.

2. Go to Bytebase, and go into project Demo Git. You’ll find there is a new Push Event and a new issue created.
   

3. Click the issue link, and you’ll see:

• The issue is created via GitHub.com.
• The issue is waiting for your rollout because it’s on Prod environment where manual rollout is required by default.
• The SQL is exactly the one we have committed to the GitHub repository.
• The Creator is Owner, because the GitHub user you use to commit the change has the same email address found in the Bytebase member list.

1. Click Rollout, and the SQL will execute. The issue will be Done.

2. Click View change, you could view the schema diff.

3. You may try with your Test environment, the only difference is that you don’t need to rollout the issue manually.

If you have Enterprise Plan. Go to GitHub repository, you will see besides your committed sql, there is a .demo_git_db##LATEST.sql file. Because you have configured Schema path template before, Bytebase will write back the latest schema to that specified path after completing the schema change. Thus you have access to an update-to-date full schema at any time.

Summary and Next

Now you have tried out GitOps workflow, which will store your MariaDB schema in GitHub and trigger the change upon committing the change to the repository, to bring your MariaDB change workflow to the next level of Database DevOps - Database as Code.

In real world scenario, you might have separate features and main branches corresponding to your dev and production environment, you can check out GitOps with Feature Branch Workflow to learn the setup. Have a try and look forward to your feedback!