ServiceStack.OrmLite VS OnlineSchemaChange

I think what you are looking for could be https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.OrmLite

[ServiceStack OrmLite][1] does just that, all our development is done locally using SQLite but then deployments use MySQL. We do fall into the 'program is simple enough' category though.

[1]: https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.OrmLite

I’ve been through multiple incidents where everything worked fine in the testing environment but ended up locking the production database for minutes when deployed. A category of open-source tools called OSC (Online Schema Change) exists to mitigate such pain, like gh-ost used by GitHub and OSC used by Meta. They work by creating a set of "ghost tables" to apply the migrations, copy over old data from the original tables, and catch up with new writes simultaneously. When all old data is migrated, you can trigger a cutover to make the "ghost tables" production. Check the post below for a great introduction and comparison:

For larger companies, with more data and high-traffic tables, schema changes may happen less often, but they still need to worry about things like downtime caused by locking. They require long internal guides on performing schema changes correctly (e.g. GitLab, PayPal), custom tools (e.g. Meta, Square), and they often document incidents or near-incidents caused by schema migrations (e.g. GitHub, Doctolib, GoCardless).