Why buy SQL Compare if I already have SQL Source Control?

JoeCool1986

If I already have SQL Source Control, and can use "Get Latest" to deploy changes to production, What's the primary reasons to get SQL Compare? Any time I need to have a complex migration that I can't simply do "Get Latest" on, it seems I should save the money and just write the script myself, since from what I can tell, even with SQL Compare you still have to write the migration script yourself. So what makes SQL Compare compelling if I already have SQL Source Control?

Thanks,
-Robert

David Atkinson

If you want to get the latest from source control do a development or test environment and are willing to 'just do it' via Get Latest, this is fine. Doing so to Production is not recommended at all. Source Control (and hence SQL Source Control) is designed for development environments. Not only do you not get to review the differences in a detailed manner, but in order to detect changes, the tool will run frequent queries against your default trace not designed to be run against a production environment. Future releases may further instrument the database to provide richer functionality that is only pertinent to development environments. This additional load may have an adverse impact on your live database. Please consult your DBA and seek permission if you have no choice by to link a production database.

If you are pushing changes to Staging or Production, it is a best practice to generate a SQL script with SQL Compare.

SQL Compare also benefits from a sophisticated deployment experience, including a detailed difference viewer, object filtering, reporting, and many more features designed to ensure your deployment goes as smoothly as possible.

Let me know if this doesn't answer your question.

Kind regards,

David Atkinson
Product Manager
Red Gate