Feature Request: Columns in Comparison

AaronTC

I was just using Data Compare 5 today to compare numerous tables between two data sources, and in order to eliminate false positives of data differences in audit columns (date_created, date_modified, etc...) I had to manually touch each table and un-check the box to compare those columns.

I think it would be a real handy feature to be able to select "exclude column from all table comparisons" so I only have to check this next to "date_created" column in one table and it will un-check that column in all the tables I am comparing (of course only those with matching name, data-type description etc...).

This feature would have saved me a lot of time and I am sure there are others who have experienced this, since it is a common practice to have the same column on many tables that you may not want to compare.

Thanks!

richardjm

Isn't that strange, no request in all this time and suddenly two come along at once .

We've had exactly the same request from somebody on the SQL Data Compare 6 Alpha forum. I'm afraid there's no real way to do this via the UI, not even sure what the UI for the feature would look like.

For the moment the only way to get the automatic functionality you're looking for is to use the Toolkit and compare your databases that way.

To do it via the UI the only way I could suggest is to create indexed views for your tables that exclude the date_created, date_modified, etc columns and synch and compare using the views instead of the tables.

HTH

mihies

richardjm wrote:

Isn't that strange, no request in all this time and suddenly two come along at once .

Who might be the other guy

richardjm wrote:

We've had exactly the same request from somebody on the SQL Data Compare 6 Alpha forum. I'm afraid there's no real way to do this via the UI, not even sure what the UI for the feature would look like.

Definitely regular expressions. There should be also an option to preview which columns get excluded.

richardjm

Well that's something for the future - if you want something now you're going to have to look into the SQL Toolkit alternatively create indexed views for your tables which you can compare a synch which exclude the columns you're not interested in.