Alembic

About Alembic

Lightweight database migration tool for use with SQLAlchemy. Alembic allows you to create, manage, and invoke change management scripts for your database, facilitating schema migrations as your application evolves.

Key Features

• 1Auto-generates migration scripts by diffing SQLAlchemy models vs. database
• 2Supports upgrade and downgrade paths for schema rollback
• 3Branch and merge support for parallel development workflows
• 4Runs raw SQL in migrations for operations beyond ORM capabilities
• 5Integrates with CI/CD pipelines for automated schema deployment

How Python Data Engineers Use Alembic

Alembic is the standard migration tool for SQLAlchemy-based Python projects. Engineers run `alembic revision --autogenerate` to create a migration script from model changes, review and edit the script, then apply it with `alembic upgrade head`. This ensures database schema changes are versioned, reviewed, and applied consistently across dev, staging, and production.