database-migration-checklist

name	database-migration-checklist
enabled	true
description	Use when performing database migration checklist — database migration safety checklist covering pre-migration validation, backup verification, compatibility checks, migration execution, data validation, rollback procedures, and post-migration monitoring. Use for schema changes, engine migrations, or data platform transitions.
required_connections	[{"prefix":"github","label":"GitHub (for migration scripts)"}]
config_fields	[{"key":"source_db","label":"Source Database","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., PostgreSQL 14 (prod-db-1)"},{"key":"target_db","label":"Target Database","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., PostgreSQL 16 (prod-db-2)"},{"key":"migration_type","label":"Migration Type","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., schema-change, engine-upgrade, platform-migration"}]
features	["DATABASE","DEPLOYMENT"]

Database Migration Checklist Skill

Execute a safe database migration from {{ source_db }} to {{ target_db }} ({{ migration_type }}).

Workflow

Step 1 — Migration Assessment

MIGRATION SCOPE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Source: {{ source_db }}
Target: {{ target_db }}
Type: {{ migration_type }}

[ ] Database size documented: ___ GB
[ ] Number of tables/collections: ___
[ ] Active connections (peak): ___
[ ] Write throughput (peak): ___ ops/sec
[ ] Estimated migration duration: ___
[ ] Maintenance window required: YES / NO
[ ] Zero-downtime migration possible: YES / NO

Step 2 — Pre-Migration Checklist

PRE-MIGRATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
BACKUP & RECOVERY
[ ] Full backup taken and verified (test restore)
[ ] Point-in-time recovery confirmed working
[ ] Backup stored in separate region/account
[ ] Backup retention extended for migration window

COMPATIBILITY
[ ] Schema compatibility verified on target
[ ] Data type compatibility checked (edge cases: dates, JSON, arrays)
[ ] Character encoding confirmed (UTF-8 consistency)
[ ] Stored procedures / functions compatible with target
[ ] Views and materialized views compatible
[ ] Triggers and constraints reviewed
[ ] Extensions / plugins available on target
[ ] Application ORM compatibility tested

TESTING
[ ] Migration script tested on staging with production-size data
[ ] Application tested against target database version
[ ] Performance benchmarks captured on staging
[ ] Query plan analysis on critical queries (no regressions)
[ ] Connection string changes tested in application config

Step 3 — Migration Execution Plan

EXECUTION PLAN
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
T-24h:
  [ ] Final staging test pass confirmed
  [ ] Notify stakeholders of migration window
  [ ] Verify monitoring dashboards ready
  [ ] Pre-create target database infrastructure

T-1h:
  [ ] Take fresh backup of source database
  [ ] Verify backup integrity
  [ ] Reduce application traffic (if applicable)
  [ ] Pause non-critical batch jobs and crons

T-0 (Migration Start):
  [ ] Enable maintenance mode (if downtime required)
  [ ] Stop writes to source (if not live migration)
  [ ] Record current WAL/binlog position
  [ ] Execute migration script / start replication
  [ ] Monitor migration progress

During Migration:
  [ ] Track replication lag (if live migration)
  [ ] Monitor source database load
  [ ] Monitor target database health
  [ ] Log any errors or warnings

Step 4 — Data Validation

DATA VALIDATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Row counts match: source vs target (per table)
[ ] Checksum validation on critical tables
[ ] Spot-check recent records (last 1000 rows)
[ ] Verify auto-increment / sequence values
[ ] Validate foreign key relationships intact
[ ] Check indexes exist and are valid on target
[ ] Verify constraints (unique, check, not-null) on target
[ ] Test critical queries return identical results
[ ] Verify data in special columns (JSON, arrays, bytea)

Step 5 — Cutover

CUTOVER STEPS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Final replication caught up (lag = 0)
[ ] Stop writes to source database
[ ] Verify final data consistency
[ ] Update application connection strings to target
[ ] Deploy application with new connection config
[ ] Verify application health checks pass
[ ] Verify read and write operations work
[ ] Disable maintenance mode
[ ] Monitor error rates for 30 minutes

Step 6 — Rollback Procedure

ROLLBACK PLAN
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rollback window: [X hours after cutover]
Rollback trigger: [error rate >X%, latency >Xms, data corruption]

Steps:
1. [ ] Revert application connection strings to source
2. [ ] Deploy application with original config
3. [ ] Verify source database is current (apply delta if needed)
4. [ ] Confirm application healthy against source
5. [ ] Investigate failure cause before retry
6. [ ] Document what went wrong

Step 7 — Post-Migration

POST-MIGRATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Immediate (0-24h):
[ ] Monitor query performance (no regressions)
[ ] Monitor connection pool utilization
[ ] Monitor replication (if applicable)
[ ] Verify backup schedule running on target
[ ] Verify monitoring alerts configured for target

Short-term (1-7 days):
[ ] Decommission source database (after safe period)
[ ] Update documentation and runbooks
[ ] Update infrastructure-as-code
[ ] Remove old connection strings and credentials
[ ] Close migration tracking ticket

Counter-Rationalizations

Shortcut	Counter	Why
"We can skip some steps for this case"	Adapt the workflow steps, don't skip them	Skipped steps are where incidents and oversights originate
"The user seems to already know what to do"	Complete all workflow phases with the user	The workflow catches blind spots that experience alone misses
"This is a minor case, full process is overkill"	Scale the process down, don't turn it off	Minor cases become major when unstructured; the process scales, not disappears
"I'll fill in the details later"	Complete each section before moving on	Deferred details are forgotten; real-time capture is more accurate
"The template output isn't necessary"	Always produce the structured output format	Structured output enables comparison, audit trails, and handoff to other teams

Output Format

Produce a migration execution report with:

1. Migration summary (source, target, type, size, duration)
2. Pre-migration checklist results with PASS/FAIL
3. Execution log with timestamps for each step
4. Data validation results with row counts and checksums
5. Post-migration monitoring observations
6. Issues encountered and resolutions