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Hi all, i am please to announce the first release of the SQL-DBDiff solution i forked at the beginning of this month. I have made a few changes, mostly cosmetic to make it a bit easier to use and nicer on the eye. I’ll be breaking those down throughout this post, but this program got it’s first official usage during the week for me at work, so i’m happy it can be released now and used as your favourite SQL Comparison/Sync/Merge/Diff tool.

First up, and most notably, the Visual Diff tab i have added. It is using a free component provided by Menee’s, and i encourage you to donate to a charity of your choice if you choose to use this application, it’s a fantastic component and does exactly what we need to do. Obviously, it will only show anything in the window if the object you are Diff’ing exists in the Source and Destination database. Here is a screengrab of it in action on my test database.

Next up, we have a more easily readable Schema window, so we can instantly see what has changed, been created, or been dropped. Without having to hunt through all the sub-folders trying to see what has changed. It might not look so bad here, but when comparing database’s with 150+ Tables/Procedures it can be quite tedious to see if anything in a sub-group has changed at all. It is displayed in the format of (Altered Objects #Count#, Created Objects #Count#, Dropped Objects #Count). I have a job to override the TreeViewControl render so that i can colour code this to match up the with the, however it’s a low priority and when i get some free time i’ll have a look. Feel free to send a patch!

Also, in the same area of the UI, i have re-jigged the Legend, it’s moved from the right-hand pane onto the left, where i feel it belongs. I have also enabled the filter check-boxes, so you can only display the Missing/Different/New objects if you wish. This too can help clear up some clutter. Please see the screengrab below of both of these features in action.

And lastly, as part of my cleaning spree, i have removed the Ascend references from the solution, i felt that the Gradient panels were terrible. It made the application look cheap and tacky. So they have been removed, in favour of standard WinForms panels, i don’t see any problem, and prefer the cleaner look. The compare and options button’s have also moved from the right hand side of the window, to next to the Connection Details panels, as this provides more width which comes in handly espcially with the Visual Diff tab. Screengrab below…

I’m sure you’ll agree, these aren’t ground-breaking changes, but i think they make the Comparing/Diffing/Merging easier, especially the Visual Diff tab, here is a full screenshot of all these features and the application running.

To download the release, please head on over to the Google Project page, where you will be able to grab the source, log issues and keep up to date with the daily changes on this project. http://code.google.com/p/sql-dbdiff/

UPDATE: Link to new version, fixes issues with x64. Here.