I’ve been meaning to write a little bit about Red Gate’s SQL tools. I have been playing with them (in particular SQL Compare and SQL Packager… although I have also played with SQL Data Compare).
I have to say that like everyone else on CodeBetter who has worked with them… these tools are absolutely cool. They are in my list of “Must Have Deployment Tools.”
SQL Compare let’s you do a bunch of things make the process of deploying SQL Server changes between say a test and production server simple… SQL Compare compares 2 SQL Server Databases and will tell you what the additions/changes/deletions are to the table structure as well as stored proc additions/changes/deletions to move from one structure to the other. It can push those changes in either direction to the production server or from the production server if you need to recreate a production issue. You can also create snapshots of databases that can be compared and changes applied even if you don’t have access to the running server (for instance if you aren’t in the same location or the server is not up all the time)
It’s pretty easy to do a compare, sift through the changes selecting the ones you want to apply, and then running the synchronisation wizard to either generate the SQL script or top deploy the changes.
I have compared SQL 2005 databases to SQL 2000 databases and deployed successfully.
Like I said it’s a must have!