The Skeema command-line tool was initially released in 2016 to bring the benefits of declarative schema management to MySQL users worldwide. Since then, our CLI has been adopted by several hundred companies, including well-known names like GitHub, Twilio, Etsy, Cash App, and Wix. The Skeema CLI is now installed over 60,000 times per month, and our software powers thousands of schema management operations worldwide every day.
As a MySQL user since 2003, Skeema’s creator Evan Elias has worked with database environments of every size and shape. He was first exposed to the concept of declarative schema management upon joining Facebook’s database infrastructure team in 2013. At Facebook, he helped build automation solutions to manage the world’s largest MySQL deployment. Prior to that, he scaled Tumblr’s backend during its hockey-stick growth period and created the sharding orchestration toolkit Jetpants.
The declarative approach to schema management has successfully improved developer productivity at countless companies for many years. Facebook’s internal systems have used declarative schema management company-wide for over a decade, and Microsoft’s SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) DACPAC functionality has existed for a similar amount of time. However, prior to Skeema, no general-purpose declarative schema management solutions were available for MySQL or MariaDB. Evan independently created Skeema to fill this gap in the developer tooling landscape. Combined with the help of the open source community, we’ve baked in a wealth of schema design best practices and expertise into the software.
About Index Hint LLC
Based in northern New Jersey, Index Hint LLC focuses on the intersection of software development, databases, and developer tooling. In addition to building Skeema, we provide custom software solutions, database performance tuning, scalability consulting, and operational assistance for a number of well-known companies in the technology, social media, e-commerce, education, and gaming spaces.