Is there a good tool for comparing the contents of 2 SQL Server 2000 Databases?

Question

There seems to be a lot of software packages on the market that compare the schema's of 2 databases. What I need is one that compares the contents of 2 databases reporting records present/missing between 2 common schemas. Does anyone know of a good tool for this?

Answer 1

I suggest you to use Godsw SQL Compare.



What is Godsw SQL Compare? Godsw SQL Compare is the powerful database schema/data comparison and synchronization tool for SQL Server database development projects. Godsw SQL Compare integrates with SQL Server, providing an effective and effortless database schema comparison for individuals and project teams to compare the SQL Server databases on either the same server or different servers. It also provides the functionality for developers to synchronize the SQL Server objects from one database to another. With Godsw SQL Compare, users can compare database structure/schema/table records over database objects (tables, stored procedures, user defined functions, views, triggers, indexes/keys, and constraints) in two databases. User can view the results at a high-level, or drill down to the fine grains of every detail for each difference. The users can synchronize each database object by copying the object (structure) from one database to another. Who needs Godsw SQL Compare? Any project team or DBA's managing multiple copies of the same database on SQL Server. If you have various database environments such as development, test, staging, and production, or distributed SQL Server databases where schema/code updates to each database can occur at a different time, Godsw SQL Compare is the right tool that you have been looking for.

Answer 2

Filemaker is what I have used since version 7. The tools available to compare databases is far superior. While it's an easy to use database system itself, it can do what you want through ODBC but it's going to take some programming or scripting work.



That being said Filemaker developers (see fm's site for a list) can build this app for you if not already available for a very small fee.



The off-shelf packages that do this are available for developers but the one I can remember cost over $10k.



Grab the free trial of FM. And watch their info-vid on integrating SQL into FM for the purpose of running reports (which is essentially what you want). They look into the scripts that compare field level data. This will tell you something simple or even far more complex. Keep in mind to NOT compare primary key ID's and compare field level data at which filemaker is the best option to do this as it can compare anything to anything.

Answer 3

Look towards Red Gate.