ENGINEERING NOTEDecember 15, 20251 min read
Managing Schema Migrations in Distributed Databases at Scale
How to run zero-downtime schema upgrades and coordinate write paths across partitioned PostgreSQL databases.
Upgrading schemas on databases that serve high-traffic endpoints is risky. We explore using the expand-and-contract pattern to support multiple schema versions simultaneously.
We look at executing background data backfills, utilizing triggers to duplicate writes, and dynamically dropping old columns once client migration completes.
WRITTEN BY
Shubham Mukherjee
Full Stack & AI Engineer crafting high-performance web applications and intelligent machine learning systems.