I am using a Postgresql database with JPA / Hibernate. When I'm adding a constraint to a column, i.e. "nullable=false", the database column is not altered to reflect this. Deleting the table and rerunning the application does the job.
Can this be achieved with JPA/Hibernate - mechanisms only WITHOUT deleting entries or the table? Like "Try to alter the table and refuse to do so on inconsistent data"? In my application.properties, I've set
hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto=update
Any other setting seems to be deleting data and/or tables.
A working solution would be to run an ALTER TABLE script and adding a constraint annotation accordingly, but I'm not really fond of this.
It is impossible to add constraints to the existing table. Think wide about it - what if the data in the table is not satisfied with the constraint? You will get the whole application crash. So Hibernate not even trying to apply the potential harmful operation.
In general, there is the wrong way to manage database schema with hibernate. Auto-generation schema is appropriate for learning or MVP purposes but not for production. Also, SQL migration is a bad idea for many reasons. You should use a special tool for schema management: liquibase (better for me) or flywaydb