Migrating Derby Database with Flyway in Spring Boot

September 28, 2025

#1

This guide shows how to use Flyway for managing schema migrations in a Spring Boot project with an Apache Derby database.

1. Add Dependencies

In pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.derby</groupId>
  <artifactId>derby</artifactId>
  <scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.flywaydb</groupId>
  <artifactId>flyway-core</artifactId>
</dependency>

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>

2. Configure Derby and Flyway

In application.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:derby:memory:migrateDB;create=true
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver
spring.datasource.username=sa
spring.datasource.password=
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=none

spring.flyway.enabled=true
spring.flyway.locations=classpath:db/migration

Set ddl-auto=none so schema changes come only from Flyway.

3. Create Migration Script

Create file: src/main/resources/db/migration/V1__create_users.sql

CREATE TABLE users (
    id BIGINT GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
    name VARCHAR(255),
    email VARCHAR(255)
);

Flyway will apply this script at startup.

4. Create Entity

import jakarta.persistence.*;

@Entity
public class User {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    private String name;
    private String email;

    // getters and setters
}

5. Repository

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;

public interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository<User, Long> {
}

6. REST Controller

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.*;
import java.util.List;

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class UserController {
    private final UserRepository repo;

    public UserController(UserRepository repo) {
        this.repo = repo;
    }

    @PostMapping
    public User add(@RequestBody User user) {
        return repo.save(user);
    }

    @GetMapping
    public List<User> all() {
        return repo.findAll();
    }
}

7. Run Migration

Run Spring Boot:

mvn spring-boot:run

Flyway will detect the Derby database, run V1__create_users.sql, and track migrations in the flyway_schema_history table.