DDL Generation

Ebean can generate and execute CREATE ALL and DROP ALL DDL scripts which create all the tables. This is used for testing purposes.

When running a test or suite of tests the DB is created entirely from scratch

Using ebean-test

The best way to control and run DDL for testing is to use ebean-test and the ddlMode. Using dropCreate means the DDL for create-all and drop-all is generated and run.

In application-test.yml

ebean:
  test:
    platform: h2 # h2, postgres, mysql, oracle, sqlserver
    ddlMode: dropCreate # none | dropCreate | migrations | create
    dbName: myapp

Using properties

If we don't want to use ebean-test we can instead set both ebean.ddl.generate and ebean.ddl.run properties to true in application-test.yml (which is in src/test/resources) and in this way the CREATE ALL DDL is only generated and executed when running tests.

In application-test.yml

ebean:
  ddl:
    generate: true
    run: true

Or application-test.properties

ebean.ddl.generate=true
ebean.ddl.run=true

db-create-all.sql

When DDL is generated db-create-all.sql and db-drop-all.sql are generated and put into the maven target or gradle build directory.

When tests are run Ebean automatically regenerates these ddl script files and executes them prior to running the tests. This effectively recreates the database prior to running tests.

Initial DDL

We can additionally specify DDL to execute prior to running the "create-all" DDL via the initSql property.

ebean.ddl.initSql=testInitialDdl.sql

Seed DDL

We can additionally specify DDL to execute after running the "create-all" DDL which we typically use to seed the database via the seedSql property.

ebean.ddl.seedSql=testSeedData.sql

Compared to DB Migrations

DB Migration is different in that DIFF DDL scripts are generated for the changes to the model and these DIFF DDL scripts can be applied to the target database typically when Ebean starts.