Two-way synchronization

jkaster

Hi. I've just started to use SQL Compare, and things are going pretty smoothly with it. I like that I can immediately get comparison results.

I have forked versions of a database I'm trying to merge back together, where there are some tables have have new columns or constraints on both sides of the comparison. Is there any way to tell the synchronization wizard to take the new things from both and merge them into either A or B? I don't want to lose the new columns that are in B when synchronizing from A.

What steps can I take to accomplish this? TIA

David Atkinson

That's tough. You can't do this with SQL Compare. If you put your databases under source control with SQL Source Control, and your branches were represented as such in source control, it might be possible to use existing source control merge functionality (we don't provide this) to achieve what you're looking for.

Whether it works or not, please respond to this post with the outcome so other users can benefit.

We may one day separate indexes and constraints as separate objects, rather than being part of the table object, but this is not scheduled for the immediate future.

Good luck!

David Atkinson
Product Manager

jkaster

Thanks for the reply. I think I'm going to investigate using SQL Compare in one window and a tool to directly manipulate the table metadata in the other. I have your full SQL Developer bundle - do you have a tool that's better than MS's Management studio I should be using for that?

David Atkinson

We don't have a tool better than Management Studio. Our general preference is to extend Microsoft's base platform rather than implement a completely new alternative. I guess you're using SQL Prompt, which should help you.

Do you prefer to use graphical designers rather than typing SQL to make your schema/data changes? We're considering adding a modeler / designer to our toolset, so it would be interesting to get your view on this.

David

jkaster

In this instance, I think I'll end up writing the script to make the metadata changes so I can re-apply it. For .NET customers like me who are hoping EntityFramework will continue to advance, I probably wouldn't be looking for a modeler from you, at least for MSSQL. However, I don't know how well EF and VS modeling works for other databases -- I imagine that will only get better.

There certainly are plenty of DBAs who don't use VS who could benefit from a good cross-platform modeling tool. I know Embarcadero (where I used to work) makes pretty good business from that.

David Atkinson

Would you want to make changes to an EF entity model? There isn't an assumption that our designer will be restricted to changes at the schema level.

If you have issues with the current Entity Designer in VS, we'd love to discuss this with you further as we have some ideas in this area.

How important is cross-platform to you? Which other platforms do you use?

David

jkaster

Yes, I'd definitely like to make changes to an EF entity model. The most glaring omission I see in it right now is there is no way to refactor the persistence layer without losing your data - at least, I haven't yet found a way to do it.

I have lots of MDA experience, and used a tool previously that would refactor the database based on updates to the model without data loss, so I'm really missing that capability right now.

There are also some other limitations of the EF designer in VS that annoy me today, again probably because I have experience with other modeling tools that streamlined some of these processes.

When you say "cross-platform" do you mean databases or operating systems? For my current work, our server-side development will be windows and .NET. Our clients will be on every other device, so we are working on solutions to reuse our model and business logic as much as possible on every OS platform.