If you haven't heard about Flyway, a database migration tool for Java, now's a good time to check it out. The 1.5 version was just released with support for Ant tasks and server credentials from Maven's settings.xml. From the Google Code page:
It just works - Refreshingly simple. Migrate from any version (incl. an empty database) to the latest version of the schema.
Automatic migration on startup - Ship migrations together with the application and run them automatically on startup using the API.
Convention Over Configuration - Classpath Scanning to automatically discover Sql and Java migrations
Plain Old Sql - SQL scripts for regular migrations (incl. placeholder replacement). No proprietary XML formats, no lock-in.
No limits - Java classes for advanced migrations
Highly reliable - Safe for cluster environments (Multiple machines can migrate in parallel)
Build tool support - Maven plugin and Ant tasks for migrating manually
Not only for Java - Command-line tool for non-JVM users and environments without Maven
Fail fast - Inconsistent database or failed migration prevents app from starting.
Schema Clean - Drop all tables, views, triggers, ... from a schema without dropping the schema itself
Go check out the introductory diagrams and descriptions here:
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