Chapter 24 · Part 4

Rollback and Roll-Forward Database

A focused chapter on rollback and roll-forward database, with practical delivery concerns, trade-offs, and the operational questions behind CI/CD work.

24-1

Why Rolling Back a Database Is Nothing Like Rolling Back an Application

When a new version of your application breaks, the fix is usually straightforward. You hit the rollback button in your deployment pipeline, and the old

6 min
24-2

When Database Migrations Fail in Production: Three Scenarios That Will Keep You Up at Night

You just ran a migration in production. It completed successfully. No errors, no timeouts, no locked tables. You breathe a sigh of relief and move on to

6 min
24-3

When Database Down Migrations Are Safe and When They Become Dangerous

You just deployed a database migration that added a phonenumber column to your users table. A few hours later, someone notices the column name should have

6 min
24-4

When Database Migrations Go Wrong: Why Rolling Forward Beats Rolling Back

You just deployed a database migration that added a phonenumber column to the users table. The migration ran successfully. Then your team realized the

5 min
24-5

When Your Database Schema Is Fine But Your Data Is Wrong

You just ran a database migration that added a new column. Everything looked good. The schema change succeeded, the column exists, and the application is

5 min
24-6

Backup Is Your Safety Net, Not Your Migration Strategy

Your team just ran a database migration that dropped the ordersarchive table. The data had been moved to a new table, so everything looked clean. But an

4 min
24-7

Choosing the Right Database Recovery Strategy for Your Team

You have just deployed a database migration to production. Five minutes later, the monitoring dashboard shows a spike in failed queries. Your team is now

5 min