Liquibase 4.0: Recovering Safely from a Failed Upgrade

Goal

Determine how to roll back a database that has experienced a partial changeSet failure while preserving data integrity.

Constraints

• Liquibase records a changeSet in DATABASECHANGELOG only after a successful run; a failed changeSet is omitted.
• Rollback relies on timestamps; if a changeSet failed mid‑execution, its timestamp is missing, making the target of rollback ambiguous.
• Using --force to reapply a previously executed changeSet can introduce duplicate operations if the failure stemmed from a data issue.

Unresolved Decision

Should Liquibase provide a dedicated mechanism—such as a FAILED column or a separate table—to log changeSets that did not complete?

Questions

1. Will future Liquibase releases support a separate log for failed changeSets to aid recovery?
2. What reliable approach exists to detect and revert partial changes when a changeSet fails partway, given missing timestamps?
3. What is the safest method to reapply a previously failed changeSet without causing duplicate operations or schema inconsistencies?