SDC to compare principal and mirror DBs

kinano

We have a mirrored DB server and we were thinking of ways to verify the principal and mirror are in sync and create reports for our peace of mind and audit purposes.

Do you think SDC will work to compare the data between the principal and the mirror even though the mirror DB is apparently in recovery mode all the time?
The two boxes are SQL Server 2005 Standard and sit on the same LAN.

One more thing, would there be any performance overhead that should be considered on either box if we were to use SDC?

Thanks a ton,

James B

Thanks for your post.

If the database is marked as in recovery, then I don't think you'll be able to connect to it from Data Compare, so that's possibly your first problem.
Assuming you /can/ connect, Data Compare works by comparing all the rows in the tables based on a unique comparison key (either a PK on the table, a unique index, or one you define manually) and then reports back differences. These can be exported out to a csv file. You can also sync up the changes if you so wish.

This comparison obviously involves a lot of queries so there may be a potential performance impact while the process runs - it depends on how busy the server is and what you'd constitute as a performance hit of course! The pro version allows you to run a commandline version, so you could schedule the comparison to take place out - of - hours (if you have such a time window) to reduce impact.

Hope that helps.