SQL Compare

Compares and synchronises SQL Server database schemas. Automate database comparisons. Synchronise your databases. Work with SQL scripts, snapshots, backups or live databases.

SQL Compare is a tool for comparing and deploying SQL Server database schemas. You can work with live databases, database snapshots, SQL scripts in source control or backups. SQL Compare helps you compare and deploy changes efficiently.

It is available in the following editions:

SQL Compare Standard Edition: Limited to manual diffs and synching of databases.
SQL Compare Professional Edition: Includes command line support for automated deployments and schema change monitoring. Also, avoid deploying unstable objects by deploying directly from a scripts folder in source control.

Key Features:

• Make deployments faster: Remembering the changes youve made to a database, working out what your colleagues have done and scripting it out for deployment is tricky and time consuming. SQL Compare makes it fast. You can explore whats changed in each database object, down to individual lines of SQL. When youre ready to deploy, you can create an error-free deployment script in minutes.
  
• Deploy with zero errors: SQL Compare scripts dependencies in your database in the right order, to make sure deployment is successful. It also flags up any issues, such as data loss, before you deploy.
  
• Find and fix problems in production: To fix errors in your production database, compare it to a backup, scripts in source control, or a database snapshot. You can deploy single objects to fix the issue fast. If you need to fix static data, use SQL Data Compare to deploy changes without the need for full database recovery.
  
• Deploy with scripts, the UI, or the command line: SQL Compare fits into the development process you prefer. You can automate deployments with the command line, run them from the UI, or save a deployment script and run it yourself. For review and sign-off, you can also export a list of changes in HTML or Excel formats.

SQL Compare - Features

The SQL Server tools consist of products for DBAs and developers to compare and synchronize databases structures, database contents and SQL Servers.

SQL Compare is used for comparing and synchronizing SQL Server database structures. It can be used in a development environment when changes made to a local database need to be pushed to a live database on a remote server. SQL Compare will compare and synchronize all database objects, including tables, stored procedures, views and user-defined functions.

New features in version 5.1:

• Bug fixes
• Updated help file
• Complete redesign of the graphical user interface
• Numerous enhancements, including:
  • Introduced project management, including the ability to specify options for each project
  • Introduced an interactive help bar
  • Improved side-by-side comparison of creation SQL
  • Added ability to see object dependencies
  • Added ability to remap database users and owners (or schemas)
• Improved SQL Server Instance detection.

New features in version 4.1 include:

SQL Server 2005 support:

• New object types:
  • XML schema collections
  • CLR assemblies
  • DDL triggers
  • Message types
  • Contracts
  • Services
  • Routes (can handle them, even though the T-SQL API is very inflexible)
  • Event notifications
  • Queues
  • Synonyms
  • Partition functions
  • Partition schemes
  • Service binding
  • Certificates, symmetric keys, asymmetric keys (partial support)
  • New datatypes (e.g. varchar(MAX))
• XML indexes
• XML schema collections (intelligent diff, that allows for better synchronization)
• CLR assemblies (intelligent comparison and synchronization)
• Database level permissions for 2005

DML trigger order

Script separation: SQL 2005 database objects use 2005 syntax, earlier versions use the earlier syntax. This is also considered for migration, so, for example, a 2005 object is migrated to 2000 using 2000 syntax.

Full backward compatibility with snapshots

View refreshes

Miniparser to unbind only necessary indexes, computed columns. Better dependency calculation

New SQL Server 2005 parser

Constraint and default parser (syntax tree builder and intelligent tree comparer)

Full internationalization for German and Japanese languages

Compatibility modes

Much faster object text population (e.g. 40 min -> 8 min in a particular case)

Loads of bug fixes, including supporting dependencies that were not supported before

Option to ignore the order of with statements

Partition schemes/functions rebuilt with minimum costs

Ignore users' permissions option for enterprise role models

SQL Compare features include:

• Compares SQL Server databases
• Produces comparison results and synchronization scripts quickly
• Database objects are scripted in the correct order even if SQL metadata (sysdepends) is broken
• Synchronizes SQL Server databases
• Save scripts for use later
• Extremely simple to use
• Integrates with SQL Query Analyzer

SQL Compare - System Requirements

• Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server
• SQL Server client-side tools (SQL Compare)
• Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0.3705+
• MDAC 2.6+
• 128 MB RAM, 10 MB hard disk space
• Runs on a user's PC (can also run on a server)
• Visual Studio .NET, or similar programming environment that uses the .NET Framework (SQL Toolkit only)