Agreed with Dmitri and Eric. Since I worked on the PR, I thought I’d share a bit of context. I agree that schema should not be a first-class concern, and that realm bootstrapping should be the main concept users care about. I also agree that a full bootstrap should remain the default behavior, but having an explicit schema setup step could offer more flexibility when neeeded.
Best, Seungchul Lee. On 2025/08/01 10:41:16 Alexandre Dutra wrote: > Hi all, > > A nice recent contribution [1], still under review, proposes to create > a separate admin tool command for setting up the database schema. > > Currently, schema setup is done as part of realm bootstrapping [2], > which can happen at server bootstrap, when running the tool’s > bootstrap command, or on-demand, depending on the RealmContextResolver > in use. For this reason, the setup script must be idempotent. > > But the PR raised several questions. I will try to summarize them here: > > 1) Should schema setup be separate from realm bootstrapping? > > 2) Should the server perform schema setup at all? If so, when? At > startup, or when a new realm is resolved? > - Side question: if the server doesn’t perform schema setup, how are > tests going to do it? > > 3) Do we want/need to support – or at least leave the door open for – > different schemas per realm? > > 4) If we introduce an option to control how schema setup is done: > - Should it be a configuration option in application.properties? It > would then be available to both server and tool. > - Should it be an option of the admin tool’s `bootstrap` command? > Opt-in or opt-out? > - Should it be an admin tool’s separate command like `setup` ? > > For 4) I would be in favor of a new configuration option, e.g.: > > polaris.schema.setup-mode=NEVER|STARTUP|PER_REALM > > It would be accessible to both server and tool, and the default could > be NEVER for production, and AT_STARTUP for tests. PER_REALM could be > introduced later. > > I’m curious to see what others think. > > Thanks, > Alex > > [1] https://github.com/apache/polaris/pull/2196 > [2] https://github.com/apache/polaris/blob/2117dbd08e8352b32a2c948ed6c166d7c77da50a/persistence/relational-jdbc/src/main/java/org/apache/polaris/persistence/relational/jdbc/JdbcMetaStoreManagerFactory.java#L148-L158 >
