ProductsDiffDogDatabase Content Differencing

Altova DiffDog® 2010 Enterprise Edition lets you easily compare and merge the contents of database tables.

DiffDog® 2010 Enterprise Edition expands on the file, XML, and directory differencing features of DiffDog® 2010 Professional Edition by adding intuitive database table compare and merge functionality. Now one utility can satisfy all your diverse differencing demands.

Compare Database Tables

Based on the powerful database table compare and merge functionality introduced in the award-winning Altova DatabaseSpy® 2010, DiffDog® 2010 Enterprise Edition displays database comparisons in an intuitive graphical table representation with connecting lines to illustrate column mapping between tables.

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You can start a new database comparison from the DiffDog File menu, or by clicking the Compare Database Data button on the toolbar.

DiffDog launches an empty database comparison window and opens the Table Selection dialog, which also includes a button to launch the database Connection Wizard.

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DiffDog® 2010 Enterprise Edition supports database table differencing for all these databases:

• Microsoft® SQL Server® 2000, 2005, 2008
• IBM DB2® 8, 9
• IBM DB2 for iSeries® v5.4, 6.1
• Oracle® 9i, 10g, 11g
• Sybase® 12
• MySQL® 4, 5
• PostgreSQL 8
• Microsoft Access™ 2003, 2007

After you connect to one or more databases, you can select the tables to be compared. When comparing multiple selections in database schemas, you can collapse and expand the display of individual tables to focus on items of interest.

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DiffDog® 2010 Enterprise Edition can compare different versions of a table in the same database type, or you can compare and merge the content of equivalent tables and entire database schemas in different database types.

When you compare different database types, DiffDog® 2010 Enterprise Edition even resolves datatype naming inconsistencies.

This means you can compare the customers table in your SQL Server database with a backup copy, for example, or you can compare the contents of any tables or your entire database schema between IBM DB2 9 and Oracle 11g implementations.

Automatic table mapping options let you instruct DiffDog® 2010 Enterprise Edition to map columns based on name, datatype, or column position. Numerous additional options let you set preferences for comparison options, XML-aware comparison for columns containing XML data, and display of the Results view.

If the results of automatic mapping are inaccurate or incomplete, you can also manually map comparisons by dragging connecting lines between table columns. In the screenshot below, the columns for middle initial did not have identical names, so they are mapped manually.

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It’s simple to compare mapped tables by clicking the Start Comparison button in the Database Comparison Toolbar.

Contents of the selected tables are compared and the database comparison map is updated to show comparison results. In the example below the content is not equal.

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Detailed Comparison Results

You can open detailed results windows for each table comparison, and you can filter the results to display or hide your preference of:

• Equal rows
• Unequal rows
• Rows that only contain data in the table on the left
• Rows that only contain data in the table on the right
• Entire columns that contain identical data

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Merge Database Differences

After you identify differences between tables, you can merge content in either direction by updating individual cells or entire tables.

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As you inspect database differences, you can use the navigation buttons familiar from file and directory comparisons.

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If you need to perform the same comparison again in the future, you can save database comparison selections in a file to easily reload. These database comparison configuration files can also be shared with Altova DatabaseSpy® 2010.

See for yourself how productively DiffDog® 2010 Enterprise Edition can perform your database table diff and merge tasks – download a fully-functional 30-day trial today.