Developer-Led Schema Changes: Insights from MySQL Belgian Days 2026

Days 2026. Discover Booking.com’s approach to empowering developers with safe schema changes using MySQL. This session, presented by Nicolai Plum, Booking.com, at the 2026 MySQL Belgium Days event, provides a deep dive into best practices for developer-managed schema changes in MySQL environments. Learn how organizations are achieving high availability, minimizing downtime, and ensuring audit compliance by modernizing workflows for schema management. Nicolai shares real-world experiences on optimizing schema changes for performance, leveraging automation, handling complexities in relational databases, and integrating with existing enterprise systems. This presentation explores challenges such as replication, compatibility, and auditing, while detailing strategies to ensure every database update supports business goals and regulatory standards. Whether you are seeking to streamline deployment pipelines or ensure reliable change tracking, this session delivers actionable guidance tailored for both technical and business stakeholders.