Datalution: a tool for continuous schema evolution in NoSQL-backed web applications

When an incremental release of a web application is deployed, the structure of data already persisted in the production database may no longer match what the application code expects. Traditionally, eager schema migration is called for, where all legacy data is migrated in one go. With the growing popularity of schema-flexible NoSQL data stores, lazy forms of data migration have emerged: Legacy entities are migrated on-the-fly, one at-a-time, when they are loaded by the application. In this demo, we present Datalution, a tool demonstrating the merits of lazy data migration. Datalution can apply chains of pending schema changes, due to its Datalog-based internal representation. The Datalution approach thus ensures that schema evolution, as part of continous deployment, is carried out correctly.