How does Liquibase handle data types?

When you specify a data type in the type field of a Change Type or tag, such as the <column type="XYZ"> field, Liquibase evaluates the type to send it to your database.

Liquibase implements many generic types natively. When necessary, Liquibase converts the data type you specify into a different type preferred by your database.

For example, if you specify the data type BOOLEAN in your changelog, Liquibase passes it to a Snowflake database as a BOOLEAN. However, on a PostgreSQL database, Liquibase converts it to a BIT.

Type mapping matrix

The following table describes the logical mapping between data types in Liquibase:

  • Each column is a generic type.

  • Each row is a database supported by Liquibase.

  • Each cell represents the database type Liquibase converts the generic type in that column to.