SQL Data Compare

The ability to compare two databases and determine what rows have changed in each is an important element in most commercial applications.

A data compare is built into Visual Studio Ultimate Edition for SQL Server only, but you cannot use the API on a non developer machine, or ship a product based upon that functionality.

More than row differences

Some data compare tools offer the ability to visually view the differences between two databases, and allow you to generate a sql script to make them the same.

Generating accurate change scripts is often much more difficult than knowing what rows changed.  Often you need to apply business logic, validation, or even deletions to get the data to actually match.  Only through an API based approach can you do this, SQL Scripts are simply not flexible enough to know all your business logic.

Why is this hard?

I recently had to merge two databases with live data.  In my database the primary key field for invoices is always incremented when we generate a new sale.  When I was testing changes locally I had to generate invoices to test the system, but the actual live system had real invoices that were being generated as well.  Those two invoices were obviously not the same.

The Data Compare tool in Visual Studio incorrectly updated the rows in my local database that caused primary key conflicts and problems with test invoice details being associated with live invoices.  I had to generate the changed manually using logic that I knew, but could not express in SQL.  In my case I wanted all rows and changes from the live database, but to lose all local changes made before a certain date. 

Our API allows you to encapsulate that type of logic into a change application without having to write all the vendor specific compare logic to find and apply the changes.  You still have to determine how to handle the changes, but it is all done through a simple API that is common across database vendors.

API Access to Data Compare

Our Data Compare API allows for access to comparison of databases from multiple vendors.  The changes are sent through to your application to determine what you want to do with conflicts.

Databases Supported

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008/2008R2
  • Microsoft SQL CE 3.5
  • VistaDB 4
  • MySql 5

We Need Your Feedback

This product is still under development, and we are seeking feedback from developers on what features and functionality they would like to see in the product.

Each user who submits feedback for us will be entered to win a free copy of the final shipping tool, and be invited to participate in the beta. 

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