Database DevOps

Accelerate Deployment for all database changes.

A black elevated track resembling an infinity loop carrying four green cylindrical database icons with a pipeline above.

Why Database DevOps?

Improve developer experience by seamlessly integrating database migrations into your application deployment pipelines. Empower non-SQL experts with AI-assisted migration authoring and visibility into database changes across all environments. Centrally enforce policies for governance that keep developers safe. Harness database DevOps bridges the gap between application delivery and database management, empowering customers to ship software faster and more reliably.

Orchestrate Database Changes

Why it matters: Allows integrating database changes into the application deployment pipeline, ensuring database and application changes are deployed together.

Gain Database Change Visibility

Easily compare database schemas between environments so that you can understand change impact and rollout progress.

Enforce DB Governance

Review and approve schema changes before deployment. Enforce policy on allowed database changes. Environment aware RBAC, policy as code and audit trails.

AI-Powered Database Migrations

Empower developers to author complex migrations and benefit from database best practices without being a database expert.

Break Down Silos

Provides a centralized way to manage database schemas and enforce governance policies - all while enabling developers and DBAs to collaborate more effectively on database changes.

Treat Database Code Like App Code

Bridge the gap between application delivery and database management with modern CI/CD best practices to ship software faster and more reliably.

Define and manage Database Promotion Rules

Leverage a CI/CD pipeline to define environment order and requirements for database deployment.

Optional Rollback Capabilities

Allows rolling back database changes if issues are encountered, reducing downtime and improving reliability.

Visual and Code Editor

Harness provides elegant drag-and-drop and developer friendly as-code experiences. Toggle between them as you like. Once you have a great pipeline, save it as a template to allow versioned, parameterized reuse. You don’t have to repeat yourself. Native Database Management Integrations: Comprehensive GitOps support with native liquibase

Advanced Controls

Synchronize key events across services using Barriers to ensure the database is up before service is rolled out. Leverage looping or matrix actions to hit every combination.

Visibility Into Database State

Why it Matters: Provides a single pane of glass to see what database changes have been deployed across environments, helping with troubleshooting and impact analysis.

Cross-Environment Visibility

Effectively understand differences in database state across environments to root cause issues and minimize risk.

Visibility into Recent Changes

Understand when database changes occurred to accelerate root cause analysis.

Ensure Consistency

Ensure all changes consistently reach all expected environments.

Table showing total 78 changesets with status indicators for Local test, Local test.., and Staging 1 environments, including deployed and in-progress markers.

Diagram showing Changeset 34 deployed with checkmarks to Development, Staging, and two Production environments on a dark background.

AI-Powered Database Migrations

Why It Matters: Developers are not DBAs. Authoring many database migrations requires deep database knowledge. AI adds this expertise, enabling developers to do more while staying safe.

Schema Aware AI Authoring Experience

Awareness of your current database state, policies, and best practices enables developers to design safe reliable database migrations.

Pre-Commit Validation

Natively test the validity of database migration, and confirm it meets your centrally managed governance rules–all before code commit.

Git-Native

Once tests pass, automatically open a PR and follow your normal change control process.

Governance

Enables DBAs to enforce policies and controls over the types of database changes that can be made, ensuring stability and compliance.

Automated Policy Enforcement

Enforce policy on database changes with the full power of OPA to analyze SQL before deployment. Give developers the ability to self-service database changes while central teams dictate rules like, “No Team can drop a table in a production environment.” With OPA, teams can be empowered while scalable guardrails ensure compliance.

Integrated Collaboration

Integrate Manual SQL reviews into your CI/CD pipelines to decrease turnaround time and increase collaboration between devs and DBAs.

Audit Trails

Harness provides clear and easily accessible audit trails so you know who made a change. With better visibility, you can meet your compliance requirements.

CUSTOMERS

Trusted by DBAs, DevOps, and Developers

Hundreds of DevOps and engineering teams that are powered by Harness become elite performers in velocity, quality, efficiency and governance.

Harness gave us a truly out-of-the-box solution with features we couldn’t get from Liquibase Pro or a homegrown approach. We saved months of engineering effort and got more for less, with better governance, smarter change orchestration, and a clearer understanding of database state across teams and environments.

Daniel Gabriel

Principal Engineer

Brick building facade with large windows and an athenahealth sign above the entrance surrounded by green tree branches.

Harness Database DevOps provides the visibility into database changes that we need to maintain the control and oversight required in the financial industry. This reduces the risk of errors and ensures that our deployments are smooth and reliable. This level of insight is particularly beneficial for our SREs and QA teams, ensuring we have a clear understanding of our database environments.

Marc Pearce

Head of Cloud Operations & DevOps

Four business professionals in formal attire collaborating around a laptop in a bright modern office.

Integrations

Bringing Databases into the CI/CD Era at athenahealth

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Compliant Database DevOps?

Compliant Database DevOps integrates databases directly into continuous delivery pipelines with built-in safeguards to protect data while maintaining agility. It combines the speed of DevOps with data security, ensuring data protection is baked into the software development process from the beginning. Key practices include cataloguing and masking data as it moves through environments and monitoring for suspicious activity to meet business objectives while protecting sensitive information.

How do I integrate harness database DevOps with other tools (e.g., Jira, bug tracking)?

Harness connects to Jira using a Jira connector that allows you to create and update Jira issues and use Jira issues in approval steps. You can add Jira approval stages that include Jira create, approval, and update steps directly into your CI/CD pipelines. For CI pipelines, install the CI Enterprise by Harness app in your Jira instance, generate an authentication token, and add a Plugin step to automatically update Jira's Build and Deployment fields with pipeline status. For Database DevOps specifically, the integration follows the same Jira connector approach, allowing you to track database changes and approvals through Jira tickets as part of your compliant database workflows.

How do you manage database version control and migrations?

Database version control uses either a migration-based approach (tracking step-by-step changes via scripts) or state-based approach (defining the desired end state). The migration-based approach tracks specific SQL changes, reference data, and schema modifications from development to production, ensuring consistency and repeatability. Best practices include versioning every change, providing rollback scripts, avoiding hardcoded secrets, and using trunk-based development with feature branches merged via pull requests.

What are the benefits of applying DevOps principles to database management?

Key benefits include faster time to market through automated workflows, improved consistency and reliability across environments, early detection of issues through automated testing, and better collaboration between developers, DBAs, and operations teams. Additional advantages include increased efficiency by saving time on manual tasks, enhanced security through consistent enforcement of best practices, and faster deployment of new features. Harness Database DevOps also accelerates deployment pace, reduces errors from manual processes, and democratizes database management by making advanced operations accessible to smaller teams.

What is the process for automating database deployments?

Automating database deployments involves treating each database change as code with version-controlled scripts that are integrated into CI/CD pipelines alongside application changes. The process includes automatically building databases from source control, running automated tests to catch issues early, and using deployment tools to apply changes consistently across environments.

Database DevOps

AI-Powered Database Migration Authoring

Why Database DevOps?

Treat Database Code Like App Code