ddl_strategy accepts flags in command line format. The flags can be vitess-specific, or, if unrecognized by Vitess, are passed on the underlying online schema change tools.

Vitess flags #

Vitess respects the following flags. They can be combined unless specifically indicated otherwise:

• -allow-concurrent: allow a migration to run concurrently to other migrations, rather than queue sequentially. Some restrictions apply, see concurrent migrations.

• -allow-zero-in-date: normally Vitess operates with a strict sql_mode. If you have columns such as my_datetime DATETIME DEFAULT '0000-00-00 00:00:00' and you wish to run DDL on these tables, Vitess will prevent the migration due to invalid values. Provide -allow-zero-in-date to allow either a fully zero-date or a zero-in-date inyour schema. See also NO_ZERO_IN_DATE and NO_ZERO_DATE documentation for sql_mode.

• -declarative: mark the migration as declarative. You will define a desired schema state by supplying CREATE and DROP statements, ad Vitess will infer how to achieve the desired schema. If need be, it will generate an ALTER migration to convert to the new schema. See declarative migrations.

• -postpone-completion: initiate a migration that will only cut-over per user command, i.e. will not auto-complete. This gives the user control over the time when the schema change takes effect. See postponed migrations.

  -declarative migrations are only evaluated when scheduled to run. If a migrations is both -declarative and -postpone-completion then it will remain in queued state until the user issues a ALTER VITESS_MIGRATION ... COMPLETE. If it turns out that Vitess should run the migration as an ALTER then it is only at that time that the migration starts.

• -singleton: only allow a single pending migration to be submitted at a time. From the moment the migration is queued, and until either completion, failure or cancellation, no other new -singleton migration can be submitted. New requests will be rejected with error. -singleton works as a an exclusive lock for pending migrations. Note that this only affects migrations with -singleton flag. Migrations running without that flag are unaffected and unblocked.

• -singleton-context: only allow migrations submitted under same context to be pending at any given time. Migrations submitted with a different context are rejected for as long as at least one of the initially submitted migrations is pending.

  It does not make sense to combine -singleton and -singleton-context.

Pass-through flags #

Flags unrecognized by Vitess are passed on to the underlying schema change tools. For example, a gh-ost migration can run with:

set @@ddl_strategy='gh-ost --max-load Threads_running=200'

Since Vitess knows nothing about --max-load it will pass it on as a command line argument to gh-ost. Consult gh-ost documentation for supported command line flags.

Similarly, a pt-online-schema-change migration can run with:

set @@ddl_strategy='pt-osc --null-to-not-null'

Consult pt-online-schema-change documentation for supported command line flags.

The online strategy uses Vitess internal mechanisms and is not a standalone command line tool. therefore, it has no particular command line flags. For internal testing/CI purposes, the online strategy supports -vreplication-test-suite, and this flag must not be used in production as it can have destructive consequences.