Feature Requests
Bernard Sheppard
Posts: 53
At least two of these issues have been discussed in various ways, but I'll ask for what I'm after so it gets considered for the next verision:
Prompt/Include/Exclude option for New Tables
When opening an existing project, when Data Compare compares the schemas of the two databases, and detects new tables, it should either include, exclude or prompt for include/exclude for new tables that were not present when the comparison project was last saved.
The choice of whether to include, exclude or prompt could be set as a user or project option.
This avoids the problem where new large tables get compared by default if you don't manually exclude them (and it can be difficult to spot new tables when you have several hundred in a database).
Prompt/Include/Exclude option for New Columns
This has been discussed - the current issue is that compare assumes that because a column wasn't listed for comparison, it was excluded, when in reality it didn't exist last time.
An approach where columns were specifically excluded from the comparison - and thus new columns were able to be included, would work well. However, as for comparing new tables, it would be useful to be able to choose the option to include by default, exclude by default, or prompt as a user or project option.
Suggested GUI Approach
In each of the cases where I've suggested prompting, I'd suggest simply displaying a list of just the changed / new tables as the second screen of the compare wizard (after the choose databases screen, but before the choose tables screen). This would allow those to be reviewed first, and then you can proceed to the main screen (where you could modify any unchanged tables as required), or hit finish to start the comparison.
This would allow the same GUI code to be used - just the code populating the list is modified to only populate it for new or modified tables / columns.
Exclude Computed Columns
No point comparing them - if the result is different, it's due to either other colums that should be compared, or schema differences.
Prompt/Include/Exclude option for New Tables
When opening an existing project, when Data Compare compares the schemas of the two databases, and detects new tables, it should either include, exclude or prompt for include/exclude for new tables that were not present when the comparison project was last saved.
The choice of whether to include, exclude or prompt could be set as a user or project option.
This avoids the problem where new large tables get compared by default if you don't manually exclude them (and it can be difficult to spot new tables when you have several hundred in a database).
Prompt/Include/Exclude option for New Columns
This has been discussed - the current issue is that compare assumes that because a column wasn't listed for comparison, it was excluded, when in reality it didn't exist last time.
An approach where columns were specifically excluded from the comparison - and thus new columns were able to be included, would work well. However, as for comparing new tables, it would be useful to be able to choose the option to include by default, exclude by default, or prompt as a user or project option.
Suggested GUI Approach
In each of the cases where I've suggested prompting, I'd suggest simply displaying a list of just the changed / new tables as the second screen of the compare wizard (after the choose databases screen, but before the choose tables screen). This would allow those to be reviewed first, and then you can proceed to the main screen (where you could modify any unchanged tables as required), or hit finish to start the comparison.
This would allow the same GUI code to be used - just the code populating the list is modified to only populate it for new or modified tables / columns.
Exclude Computed Columns
No point comparing them - if the result is different, it's due to either other colums that should be compared, or schema differences.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Thanks for telling us about this. In particular, the fact that new tables aren't selected if they were added between data compares has been quite frustrating for our users. We are going to release a major version of Data Compare in the coming months and your suggestions have been requested so if they are feasable they should appear in the next version.