[lazy_moderator1]

you can always use views + triggers for a zero downtime migration, this is a non-issue

[nijave]

It sounds like gh-ost is supposed to offer more control over the process but I question how many companies need that level of sophistication in DB migrations.

[oblio]

Can you expand on this? I'm curious about the steps.

[nijave]

Sounds like it's basically explained in the gh-ost readme https://github.com/github/gh-ost#how

I think it amounts to "use views to decouple access to the table with a fixed interface" and "use triggers for migrating data between tables"