Multi-Profile Configurations with H2 in Spring Boot

October 21, 2025

This guide explains how to set up multi-profile configurations in Spring Boot with H2 database for different environments.

1. Add Dependencies

In pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
  <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
</dependency>

2. Default Application Properties

In application.properties:

spring.profiles.active=dev

This sets the default profile to dev.

3. Dev Profile with H2

Create application-dev.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:mem:devdb
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.h2.Driver
spring.datasource.username=sa
spring.datasource.password=
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=create-drop

4. Test Profile with H2

Create application-test.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:mem:testdb
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.h2.Driver
spring.datasource.username=sa
spring.datasource.password=
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=create-drop

5. Switching Profiles

Run the app with a specific profile:

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.profiles=test

This activates the test configuration instead of dev.

6. Usage

dev profile → for local development
test profile → for integration/unit testing
other profiles → can later be added for staging or production