migration-ready-schema

Migration-ready schema — importable from day one

Every SMB product's wedge is low switching cost — the customer brings their data from the incumbent. If the schema can't receive that data idempotently and reversibly, the migration-import-engineer blocks and the wedge is a slogan. These rules are cheap at design time and impossible to retrofit cleanly. Apply them to the data model in ARCH, before any import is designed.

The three rules (the ones that actually block imports)

1. Importable entities carry source_ref (provenance)

Any entity that can be populated from an incumbent export or a third-party sync gets a nullable, unique source_ref column:

source_ref  text  UNIQUE NULL   -- e.g. "servicetitan:pricebook:8842"

• It is the dedup key for idempotent re-import (re-running an export never duplicates).
• Namespaced {source}:{type}:{id} so two incumbents can't collide.
• Nullable because natively-created rows have no source.

2. Importable entities carry import_batch_id (rollback)

import_batch_id  uuid  NULL  -- tags every row written by one import run

Rollback = delete where import_batch_id = ?. Without it there is no undo, and an import with no undo is one a user will never trust enough to run.

3. Model real-world actors as entities, not inline fields

A customer, contact, vendor, member, or tenant is an entity with its own table, even if v1 only stores a name + phone. Reason: imports populate these before the dependent records (quotes, orders, bookings) exist — an inline customer_name field on Quote has nowhere to land an imported customer. Inline-actor is the single most common migration blocker.

-- WRONG (blocks import):  Quote(... customer_contact text)
-- RIGHT:                   CustomerContact(id, ..., source_ref, import_batch_id)
                            Quote(... customer_contact_id → CustomerContact.id)

Supporting rules (cheap, prevent silent data loss)

• Money in integer minor units (*_cents), never float — incumbent exports carry exact amounts; floats corrupt them.
• Timestamps carry the source timezone (store UTC + offset, or tz-aware) — exports use local times; ambiguous MM/DD and naive datetimes lose data.
• Infra tables for integration bookkeeping exist in the model: outbound_message (idempotent send guard), processed_webhook_events (event dedup). The integrations-engineer relies on them; enumerate them so they aren't a surprise.

Checklist (architect runs this before finalizing the data model)

For each entity in the data model:
- [ ] Can it be imported from an incumbent or third-party? If yes → has source_ref + import_batch_id
- [ ] Is it a real-world actor (customer/contact/vendor/member)? If yes → it is its own entity, not an inline field
- [ ] Money fields integer minor units? Timestamps tz-aware?
- [ ] Listed the infra tables (outbound_message, processed_webhook_events) the integrations layer needs?

A data model that passes this checklist hands migration-import-engineer a destination it can import into idempotently and reversibly — no blocked seam.