How Does PayloadCMS Support the Expand, Migrate, and Contract (EMC) Pattern?

[SychMusti]

Introduction

The Expand, Migrate, and Contract (EMC) pattern is a widely adopted strategy for making safe and backward-compatible database schema changes. It ensures smooth transitions without downtime or breaking existing functionality. I am interested in understanding how PayloadCMS supports this pattern and how the community implements it for migrations.

Questions for the Community

• How does PayloadCMS facilitate the Expand, Migrate, and Contract (EMC) pattern in your experience?
• What are your best practices for performing migrations in PayloadCMS while ensuring minimal downtime?
• Have you faced any challenges when following this pattern in PayloadCMS, and how did you overcome them?
• Do you use PayloadCMS’s migration system as-is, or do you integrate additional tools to manage schema changes?

Looking forward to your insights and experiences!