Excluding specific column names from all comparisons
dvdchas
Posts: 10
For the past few years I've been working with several products that generate tables on top of Sql databases. These tables tend to have a 4 or 5 columns that are common to all tables, that include dates, timestamps or usernames. I'd like to exclude columns from comparisons across all tables when doing a compare.
I can't find an easy way of doing this in the current product. Possibly if you added a new tab, similar to the 'Tables & Views' tab, named 'Columns & Types'. This new tab could list all columns across all *MAPPED* tables/owners in one large list. The user could then untick the specific column names 4 or 5 in my case, which would affect the comparison against hundreds of tables. Note: columns with the same name but different datatypes would need to be listed seperately.
Additionally it would be nice to unmap or set to ignore data comparison based on data types. E.g. I'd like to prevent comparison of datatime fields across all my tables. This could possibly easily be implemented again on the 'Columns & Types' tab, but with the help of a search or simply sorting the output and then unticking all the datetype rows.
Rob
I can't find an easy way of doing this in the current product. Possibly if you added a new tab, similar to the 'Tables & Views' tab, named 'Columns & Types'. This new tab could list all columns across all *MAPPED* tables/owners in one large list. The user could then untick the specific column names 4 or 5 in my case, which would affect the comparison against hundreds of tables. Note: columns with the same name but different datatypes would need to be listed seperately.
Additionally it would be nice to unmap or set to ignore data comparison based on data types. E.g. I'd like to prevent comparison of datatime fields across all my tables. This could possibly easily be implemented again on the 'Columns & Types' tab, but with the help of a search or simply sorting the output and then unticking all the datetype rows.
Rob
Comments
Thank you for your post into the forum.
I have added the details of your post to an existing Feature Request, to "exclude columns from all tables when performing a comparison".
The reference for this Feature Request is SDC-880. Hopefully the SQL Data Compare Product Manager and Development Team will consider this request in a future version of the product.
Many Thanks for your suggestion.
Eddie
Senior Product Support Engineer
Redgate Software Ltd
Email: support@red-gate.com