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SQL Compare 8.0 released

David AtkinsonDavid Atkinson Posts: 1,439 Rose Gold 2
edited January 12, 2009 6:28AM in SQL Compare Previous Versions
SQL Compare 8.0 has been released and is available for download. This is a major update to SQL Compare, providing fine grained object filtering, improvements to working with scripts folder support, and many usability improvements. This release also delivers numerous bug fixes and minor enhancements.

Key changes:

• Filtering rules: SQL Compare 8.0 introduces fine-grained filtering of database objects, and you can now build highly expressive rules to filter out objects with a specific schema, or objects that have a particular prefix. For example, it is now easy to exclude from the comparison result stored procedures that belong to the “marketing” schema and have the “dev_” or “tmp_” prefix.

• Project selection and project saving: After a great deal of usability testing and research we have changed the way projects are saved. You now have the ability to explicitly save comparison projects, without having to perform a comparison. The project files are also now easier to locate and share.

• Error reporting for scripts folders: In SQL Compare Pro version 6 we introduced the ability to compare and synchronize against SQL creation scripts. Some people had extra SQL statements in their creation scripts that were intentionally not considered by SQL Compare. Examples included drop statements and certain alter statements. SQL Compare now provides detailed information on what statements are ignored, and provides warnings about which branches of conditional statements are being chosen.

• Handling target scripts as live databases: Prior versions of SQL Compare Pro could synchronize differences to creation scripts. However, as of this version, SQL Compare can also provide a migration script as well. This feature can be used to quickly generate change script for the differences between any two versions of a database schema when the target schema is stored as a set of creation scripts (for example it is stored in source control).

• Backup before synchronization: Many customers requested the ability to take a database backup automatically before synchronization. This feature is now part of SQL Compare, and you can choose between a native SQL Server backup, a SQL Compare schema snapshot, or a compressed/encrypted backup with Red Gate SQL Backup if available.

• Improved the way we display find results by showing database objects that match as well as objects that do not match a find request.

SQL Compare 8.0 also includes some bug fixes, including:

• Improved dependency resolving, including dependencies between defaults and their referenced functions

• Extended properties of certain data types being inconsistent between the live database and script folders

• Many improvements to schema mappings
David Atkinson
Product Manager
Redgate Software
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