JA LiquiBase_Redacted.pdf

Sole Source Justification Checklist Template_NOVEMBER_22_2019

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXEMPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action:

The proposed action is for a Firm-Fixed price (FFP) task order issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name Liquibase Pro database schema change management solution. The licenses for this software included in the Base Period, will be renewed annually with the exercise of each option period and provide associated onboarding, assistance with installation, and maintenance in support of the Veterans Benefits Administration Corporate Database.

3. Description of Supplies or Services:

The Liquibase Pro command line tool delivers automatable database schema change management that can be seamlessly integrated into continuous integration and deployment pipelines. This tool allows users to track, version, deploy, and rollback individual or groups of changes, make use of stored procedural code, define preconditions to control the execution of updates based on the state of a database, preview/dry run changes before they are applied, generate comparisons between databases to detect unexpected changes, automate notifications to alert users when those differences are detected, and verify quality and security of database code against a set of rules before deployment thereby enabling users to revise and release database changes more quickly and safely from development to production.

The Premium Support Package provides coverage as 24x7x365 for issues of severity 1 and 2 where catastrophic failures and work stoppages exist and 12x5 coverage for severity levels 3 and 4 for inconveniences where there is an acceptable work around and for informational questions or cosmetic issues. Liquibase Pro also offers assistance with the onboarding and implementation process. This service is included in the Quickstart Support package and includes implementation of one database platform, testing & go-live, development of flow script, custom checks, standard dashboard setup, and team training. The period of performance shall be a 12-month base period, with three 12-month option periods.

4. Authority Cited:

Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(a)(4), the following brand name requirement is being justified and approved as an exception to fair opportunity under the statutory authority of Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), entitled “Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or

Liquibase Pro 2024 services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized.”

5. Reason for Authority Cited:

Based upon market research, as described in section 8 of this justification, it has been determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers of the required brand name Liquibase Pro product on the NASA SEWP V GWAC. VA requires a database change management tool that can be integrated into a continuous integration and deployment pipeline, supports use with multiple database environments, provides targeted rollback capability, detects and reports database differences, and supports the development operations workflow by allowing programmatic control of operations during the deployment process. This would help reduce errors and delays during database releases, increase traceability, and allow accurate revision of database schemas while maintaining a history of those changes. Liquibase Pro tier provides these key features in a flexible, user-friendly tool, that can be easily integrated into a wide variety of continuous integration and deployment pipelines. Of the competitors that were compared to Liquibase Pro, none were able to meet all requirements; specifically, those for execution in a continuous integration and deployment pipeline, targeted rollback capability, and drift detection. Familiarity with LiquiBase Open Source also ensures a simpler onboarding process for VA personnel to LiquiBase Pro than a transition to an alternate solution.

VA currently uses Liquibase Open Source throughout the organization for database change management. However, this free, community version does not provide adequate drift detection, targeted rollbacks, support use with stored logic or preconditions, provide governance and security automation, automated deployment features called Flow Files, important quality checks, or have additional support packages available. The Liquibase Pro Flow File feature is a structured document that encapsulates a multi-step deployment workflow in a single source-controllable file enabling all steps to be run sequentially from a single flow command providing a streamlined management and deployment.

Liquibase Pro quality checks offer comprehensive validation and built in validators, preconditions, and postconditions which ensures a thorough validation of database changes The Liquibase Pro validation rules are also customizable to meet the organization’s specific requirements. Additionally, validation with Liquibase Pro is automated and integrated into the deployment workflow which saves time, effort, and mitigates human error risk.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition:

VA conducted market research, details of which are in Section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements.

However, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name Liquibase Pro licenses, as well as software maintenance and support. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(1), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, in accordance with FAR 5.301, 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), and 16.505(a)(4)(iii), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contract Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition:

The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research:

A team of technical experts conducted market research via internet searches into Liquibase Pro as well as for alternitive companies and products determined to duplicate the following key functionalities of Liquibase Pro most closely. The top competitors of Liquibase Pro were determined to be Redgate Flyway and Toad developer tools. Each of these companies offer a product comparable to the key functionalities of Liquibase Pro. However, both evaluated solutions failed to meet more than one of the VA’s requirements, and neither offered automated quality checks, or employ the use of flow files or similar constructs to facilitate a granular level of control and minimize the level of effort associated with management.

Redgate Flyway Enterprise tier offers the closest functionality to that of Liquibase Pro.

However, this software does not meet the requirement for the project as outlined below.

Flyway Enterprise’s drift detection functionality is focused on schema changes and is not capable of detecting drift at a more granular object level as is required for this project.

Redgate Flyway also fails to meet the requirement for targeted rollback ability. Rolling back changes with Flyway requires all changes in a file to be rolled back, whereas Liquibase handles this at a more atomic level, allowing users to easily re-order and cherry-pick changes to deploy.

The requirement for comprehensive, automated quality checks is also unable to be met with the use of this software. While Flyway does offer some of this capability, validation checks for this software are primarily focused on syntax errors and rely heavily on manual validation practices that would increase the risk of human error and require a significant use of time and resources.

Unlike Liquibase, Flyway’s repeatable migration scripts do not employ the required use of flow files or similar constructs to enable granular control of these processes. This lack of granularity and control would result in less structured and cohesive deployment workflows increasing the risk of error and resulting in a process that is inefficient in comparison.

Toad developer tools failed to meet multiple key requirements for this project and does not provide the robust package of features and support that is offered with Liquibase Pro. Toad is unable to integrate with any CI/CD pipeline tools and provides inadequate workflow automation capabilities, both of which violate critical requirements for this initiative. Additionally, Toad is incapable of targeted rollbacks. Unlike Liquibase Pro, all rollbacks when using Toad, would require manual intervention to complete.

Furthermore, the quality checks available with Toad are insufficient and demonstrate a lack of flexibility, comprehensiveness, limited scope, and reliance on manual review intervention. In contrast, Liquibase Pro provides built-in, automated best-practice validation features that can be customized to further ensure that the quality checks in place meet validation requirements. While Toad possesses some version control features, these are not tightly integrated and present some configuration difficulties.

When comparing Liquibase Pro with Toad and Flyway from a financial perspective, its essential to scrutinize the specific functionalities and capabilities offered by Liquibase Pro that are either not available in Toad or Flyway or require alternative solutions and third party workarounds to meet the VA’s requirements. The source code for Liquibase Pro Flow File is proprietary in nature and therefore cannot be duplicated. Flow Files are capable of joining multiple, powerful features together in an automated process, including drift detection and alerts, quality checks, and database state comparisons in a consistent, reusable best practice template. This is not a feature that has a work around. Because the primary purpose of this initiative is the automation of set actions to a database, both Flyway and Toad fail to meet the principal requirement of the VA.

Additionally, Toad cannot natively integrate with a DevOps tool which is a requirement of this project. To provide a workaround, writing automation scripts and leveraging Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) would take extra personnel to develop and test thoroughly, as well as an extra 2 months of partial team effort (1 DBA, 2 DevOps, 1 QA).

This would not only be an increased cost and an infrastructure change, but an added complexity to a system which opens up the entire flow to errors and downtime.

For both Flyway and Toad, reliable externalized quality checks would need to be created through a different platform. This would be exceptionally critical because Toad and Flyway only offer limited quality checks as well as limited capabilities for drift detection or error checking. It is likely that another enterprise tool would need to be acquired, dramatically increasing the overall price. This would also take extra personnel to research, procure, develop, thoroughly test, an extra 3 months of whole team effort (1 Dev, 2 DBA, 2 DevOps, 1 QA), potentially 3-4 months of downtime, and an additional 1- 2 personnel to maintain the quality checks and observability tools indefinitely.

The VA estimates that approximately 50 users will be required to use the selected software. Flyway is licensed on a per user basis at $2,781.00 per user / per year. Toad also prices their license cost on a per user basis at approximately $1,536.86 per user / per year. Liquibase is a systems account with an upfront cost. Given the size of the VA and fluidity of work allocation shifts, a system account saves us from downtime, despite a potentially higher upfront cost. However, Liquibase ultimately provides cost savings by streamlining processes, mitigating human risk and downtime, and creating a more powerfully protected database.

9. Other Facts: None.

10. Technical and Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in the justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Date: ___________________________

Product Manager Signature:

11. Determination of Best Value: I hereby determine that the anticipated price to the Government for this action will be fair and reasonable because NASA SEWP V GWAC prices have previously been determined fair and reasonable. Additionally, the successful quote will be compared to the published price lists on the NASA SEWP V GWAC price catalog of the successful offeror. Finally, the successful quote will be compared with the Independent Government Cost Estimate.

Date:____

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature:

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Date:____

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: