SQL 2012 Schema / Data Compare In VS2010

Question

I searched everywhere to find out if there is a way to compare schemas and data for a SQL 2012 database using existing Schema / Data comparisons that are currently included in VS 2010 Ultimate.

The best I could come up with is a dumb additional tool (SSDT Power Tools), which is almost not the same level of usability for comparing circuits and does not compare data.

Unfortunately, we went ahead and set up a new server with SQL 2012 and were ready to transfer our current production to it when I found out that all the good tool that we used would not work and that there was no backward compatibility for comparison from 2012 to any previous version of the database with SSDT.

I’m looking for any help that will solve my problem, since my alternative is to drop the 2012 server and deploy everything to 2008 R2, because our work requires us to constantly compare the data.

Answer 1

A few points of clarification. As mentioned for schema / data comparison, it is best to use a commercial tool such as Red-Gate SQL-Compare. However, for completeness, I will add a couple more points:

• SSDT makes a comparison scheme between versions and releases of SQL Server. Data is not currently being compared. Read more about SSDT in blog posts on this topic.

• You may be able to fix the version problem by setting the database compatibility level to something lower than SQL Server 2012, as shown in the figure below from SSMS.

Answer 2

You can also use visual studio addin to compare sql server databases .. It is lightweight(1mb) and also includes some additional features over SSDT ..