Using Flyway with H2 Database in Spring Boot

October 23, 2025

This guide shows how to use Flyway migration with H2 database in Spring Boot for versioned and automated schema management.

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

2. Configure H2 and Flyway

In application.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:mem:flywaydb
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.h2.Driver
spring.datasource.username=sa
spring.datasource.password=
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=none
spring.flyway.enabled=true

3. Create Migration Script

In src/main/resources/db/migration/V1__create_user_table.sql:

CREATE TABLE users (
    id BIGINT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    username VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
    email VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL
);

Flyway will run this script automatically at startup.

4. Add Another Migration

src/main/resources/db/migration/V2__add_age_column.sql:

ALTER TABLE users ADD COLUMN age INT;

Each migration file must follow the naming pattern V<version>__<description>.sql.

5. Run Application

When the app starts, Flyway checks migrations and applies missing ones to the H2 database.

6. Verify

Enable the H2 console by adding:

spring.h2.console.enabled=true

Go to http://localhost:8080/h2-console to confirm the schema updates.