Using Liquibase with H2 Database in Spring Boot Applications

October 30, 2025

#1

This guide shows how to integrate Liquibase with H2 database in a Spring Boot app for managing schema changes easily.

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.liquibase</groupId>
  <artifactId>liquibase-core</artifactId>
</dependency>

2. Configure H2 and Liquibase

In application.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:mem:liquibasedb
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.h2.Driver
spring.datasource.username=sa
spring.datasource.password=
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=none
spring.liquibase.change-log=classpath:db/changelog/db.changelog-master.xml

3. Create Changelog File

src/main/resources/db/changelog/db.changelog-master.xml:

<databaseChangeLog 
    xmlns="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog
     http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog/dbchangelog-3.1.xsd">

    <changeSet id="1" author="dev">
        <createTable tableName="employee">
            <column name="id" type="BIGINT" autoIncrement="true" primaryKey="true"/>
            <column name="name" type="VARCHAR(100)"/>
            <column name="role" type="VARCHAR(50)"/>
        </createTable>
    </changeSet>
</databaseChangeLog>

4. Run the Application

Start your app:

mvn spring-boot:run

Liquibase will apply the schema automatically to H2.

5. Verify

Open H2 console at:

http://localhost:8080/h2-console

Run:

SELECT * FROM employee;

You will see the table created by Liquibase.