After importing a production database dump into our dev environment, our Spring Boot applications (two services sharing the same PostgreSQL database) fail to start with the error:

Copy .springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'liquibase'...
liquibase.exception.LockException: Expected single row from ... but got 2
The issue occurs only in the dev environment after importing the dump. Locally, both services work fine when started together.

Key Details:

Problem: The DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table has multiple rows (expected: 1 row with ID=1).

Cause: Likely caused by importing a corrupted DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK state from the production dump.

What We’ve Tried:

Manually deleting extra rows in DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK and resetting the table (works temporarily).

Confirmed both apps use the same Liquibase changelog files (see configurations below).

Question: How to prevent this error when importing production dumps to dev?

Configurations:

app-backend-1 (DatabaseConfig.java):

java

@Bean  
public SpringLiquibase liquibase(DataSource dataSource, LiquibaseProperties liquibaseProperties) {  
  // ... sets changelog to "classpath:config/liquibase/master.xml"  
} 

app-backend-2 (DatabaseConfiguration.java):

java

@Bean  
public SpringLiquibase liquibase(DataSource dataSource, LiquibaseProperties liquibaseProperties) {  
  // ... also uses "classpath:config/liquibase/master.xml"  
} 

Liquibase Changelog (master.xml):

xml

<databaseChangeLog>  
  <include file="config/liquibase/changelog/00000000000000_initial_schema.xml"/>  
  <!-- ~30 other included changelogs -->  
</databaseChangeLog>  

Error Context:

Locally, both apps start without issues.

In dev, after importing the dump, the apps fail with the BeanCreationException.

Hypotheses:

The production dump includes a DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table with invalid state.

Both apps attempt to run Liquibase migrations simultaneously, causing lock conflicts.

Ask: How can we ensure the DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table remains valid after importing a production dump? Are there best practices for handling Liquibase in multi-service environments with shared databases?

After importing a production database dump into our dev environment, our Spring Boot applications (two services sharing the same PostgreSQL database) fail to start with the error:

Copy .springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'liquibase'...
liquibase.exception.LockException: Expected single row from ... but got 2
The issue occurs only in the dev environment after importing the dump. Locally, both services work fine when started together.

Key Details:

Problem: The DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table has multiple rows (expected: 1 row with ID=1).

Cause: Likely caused by importing a corrupted DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK state from the production dump.

What We’ve Tried:

Manually deleting extra rows in DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK and resetting the table (works temporarily).

Confirmed both apps use the same Liquibase changelog files (see configurations below).

Question: How to prevent this error when importing production dumps to dev?

Configurations:

app-backend-1 (DatabaseConfig.java):

java

@Bean  
public SpringLiquibase liquibase(DataSource dataSource, LiquibaseProperties liquibaseProperties) {  
  // ... sets changelog to "classpath:config/liquibase/master.xml"  
} 

app-backend-2 (DatabaseConfiguration.java):

java

@Bean  
public SpringLiquibase liquibase(DataSource dataSource, LiquibaseProperties liquibaseProperties) {  
  // ... also uses "classpath:config/liquibase/master.xml"  
} 

Liquibase Changelog (master.xml):

xml

<databaseChangeLog>  
  <include file="config/liquibase/changelog/00000000000000_initial_schema.xml"/>  
  <!-- ~30 other included changelogs -->  
</databaseChangeLog>  

Error Context:

Locally, both apps start without issues.

In dev, after importing the dump, the apps fail with the BeanCreationException.

Hypotheses:

The production dump includes a DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table with invalid state.

Both apps attempt to run Liquibase migrations simultaneously, causing lock conflicts.

Ask: How can we ensure the DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table remains valid after importing a production dump? Are there best practices for handling Liquibase in multi-service environments with shared databases?

• postgresql
• spring-boot
• database-migration
• liquibase

2 Answers 2

1. Use session-level instead of transaction-level LockService implementations. Session-level locks get automatically released if the database connection drops. This way, there won't be any garbage in the DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table and it will always be in a valid state.

2. I would exclude the data of the DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table from your dump entirely, as it represents Liquibase processes of the production state and not the dev state.

How I Fixed the "Expected Single Row" Liquibase Error

Manually copying the sanitized dump into PostgreSQL via PG Admin’s query console resolved the issue.

Import the Clean Dump:

• Open PG Admin’s Query Tool.

• Copy-paste the entire sanitized dump content into the editor.

• Execute the script