DTS Compare is UNUSABLE!

Neil Davidson

Thanks for your feedback.

We're aware that DTS Compare is the weakest part of the bundle and we're trying to decide what to do with it at the moment. Your comments are very useful.

- Neil

sstephen

Any word on how this is going? We purchased 2 licenses in our group and this DTS compare was one of the main reasons we wanted to use this software. We get the out of memory error as well, and would like a resolution. We have 3 gigs of RAM and 4 gigs for our paging file.

I can't believe it would be too hard to get a list of DTS packages on each server, and be able to select which ones to compare instead of all of them.

Thanks, Scott

Bart Read

Hello,


First off, my apologies for the problems you've been having using DTS Compare. Secondly, let me reassure you that we are very grateful for your feedback, and that we take it extremely seriously. As a result of this we are working on DTS Compare to resolve the issues that you have been experiencing.

As Neil has said above we are aware that this is the weakest product within the bundle, and also of the number of issues our customers have experienced with it, but this is something we intend to correct.

At this stage I obviously cannot tell you exactly what will be going in to any new version of DTS Compare but I can tell you that our primary concerns will be both the actual and perceived performance of the product, its reliability, and its overall usability. I can also say that these concerns will come ahead of the addition of any new functionality.

Pleaes feel free to contact me directly using bartdotreadatredhyphengatedotcom if you have any additional comments, problems or feedback.


Many thanks,

======================
Bart Read
Software Engineer
Red Gate Software Ltd
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bmatson

Seriously, how hard is it to just have DTS compare allow you to only compare a single package instead of trying to do every package on the server? This alone would get you miles closer to making this a usable product. As it stands today I can't even begin to use it because it insists on trying to read every single DTS package.

Bill

Brian Donahue

The internal Beta version of DTS Package Compare (which is what we're going to call it) will allow you to start looking at packages almost immediately.

It shows you all of the packages in a greyed-out shadow as soon as it can generate a list, then as each comparison is completed the package will change to the normal colour so that you can double-click it and see the results as soon as the comparison is done. In other words, the comparison is going to run in a background thread that runs at the same time as you're viewing the comparison.

bmatson

Just giving me a list of packages doesn't really fix the problem if the program continues to attempt to do a compare of all the packages! I've got over 70 packages on the server and my computer runs out of memory long before it finishes.

Is this problem addressed? From your description it is not. If there isn't a mechanism to allow me to pick and choose which packages to compare then the product is still unusable.

Brian Donahue

What I'm describing is the next version. It compares in the background so the GUI is available right away. You do not have to wait for all comparisons to finish before looking at package comparisons.

Bart Read

Hi Bill,


The new version will allow you to do exactly what you are asking for. You can just click on the package you're interested in whilst the background comparison of the other packages is still running. You will then see detailed comparison results for *only* that package on the right-hand side of the window. Let me emphasise that you don't have to wait for the background comparison to reach the package you're interested in: you can just click on it straight away. The results may still take a few seconds to appear, and we've seen some particularly large packages taking a minute or more to load the first time, but you can get the information you're interested in much more quickly than with the previous version.

By default the latest package version(s) will be compared, however you will be able to select different versions of the packages using drop-downs at the top of the screen.

You can also compare any two arbitrarily selected DTS packages against eachother, which is useful for many people who use different names for different versions of their packages rather than relying on the versioning system provided in SQL Server.

The beta version of DTS Package Compare 2.0 should be available within the next month or so. If you would like to be added to the beta program to get early access to the new features in advance of the release please email support@red-gate.com.


Kind regards,