Questions re SQL Compare 5.2.0.32

hparnett

1. Comparisons between some databases show that one of the DBs is missing the list of stored procedures installed by Visual Studio when in fact the SPs are in all of the DBs. Comparisons to other DBs correctly show them in both.

2. Comparisons between some DBs place a table with columns in a different order in the "Objects are Different" group but comparisons to other DBs show the tables in the "Identical" group - when selecting the table in either group the differences are flagged as expected.

3. When attempting to connect to the check for updates site, a message always pops up in about 5 seconds stating the operation timed out.

4. Some tables show up as different between databases but the comparison screen does not highlight any rows where the objects are different?

Brian Donahue

Hello,

Maybe I can help to explain some of your findings:

1. Comparisons between some databases show that one of the DBs is missing the list of stored procedures installed by Visual Studio when in fact the SPs are in all of the DBs. Comparisons to other DBs correctly show them in both.

Are these stored procedures marked as system objects rather than user objects? In that case, SQL Compare would filter them out. Synchronizing system objects is a very bad idea. Alternatively, the ownership of these objects could be different, resulting in a set of objects that exist in one database and not in the other with the same object names.

2. Comparisons between some DBs place a table with columns in a different order in the "Objects are Different" group but comparisons to other DBs show the tables in the "Identical" group - when selecting the table in either group the differences are flagged as expected.

There is a proect setting called 'force column order to be identical' that will consider differences in column order. Turning this off will cause SQL Compare to ignore the order in which columns appear in each database.

3. When attempting to connect to the check for updates site, a message always pops up in about 5 seconds stating the operation timed out.

There are lots of reasons for this. The most common include firewalls that block SOAP webservice calls, and credentials not getting passed to a proxy server on your network. Although the check for updates and activation servers use the Windows credential cache to authenticate to your proxy, it doesn't seem to work in all circumstances.

4. Some tables show up as different between databases but the comparison screen does not highlight any rows where the objects are different?

I can't really say: I can tell you that the side-by-side window and the 'binary' comparison algorithms are completely different, the text-based 'window' algorithm being less accurate.