Format SQL before compare

younes

Need to have a check box option to format SQL right before compare. This way false differences due to different format styles will be eliminated

Chris.Allen

I'll forward your comments on to our product management team

DanAvni

6 years later, any news?

Jessica R

Hi @DanAvni,

No changes to this yet, I'm so sorry to say, and our apologies for the lack of updates!

I've spoken with our dev team and it looks like a major reason this hasn't been implemented yet is because we've had to wait until the new SQL Prompt formatting engine was completed. This was an entirely new formatting engine which makes the formatting code more shareable- the SQL Prompt team have been working on it for the last few years and have just finished earlier this year.

With the new engine done though, there are still some technical issues and other decisions that need to be worked out before a formatting feature can be added. For example, there seems to be two distinct use-cases for Prompt formatting in Compare: either to use Prompt formatting as a way to ignore formatting differences at comparison time, or to use Compare to apply Prompt formatting at deployment time. For both cases, we'd need to work out a way for SQL Compare to format that would be least confusing (the former in particular would break the "what you see compared is what you get deployed" way that Compare currently does things which is a concern).

We are currently working on some things that would technically make this easier, so we may hopefully see more progress here in the future!

DanAvni

@Jessica R , Thanks for the detailed info. Glad things are at least progressing.

I agree these are two use cases and as such I think deserve two distinct checkboxes in the project options:
"Format synchronization SQL" and "Show formatted difference". In my case I would use both. Currently from time to time I am taking the sync sql generated and format it on the side and run it manually. The problem is that I could have a formatted sql on one side and unformatted sql on the other side which makes it hard to compare.

Jessica R

Thanks for that feedback @DanAvni! I've passed it on to our developers.