Table Comparison Tools?

Rhino

Is anyone aware of software - freeware, shareware or commercial - that could
be used to compare two tables and highlight any differences between them?

Ideally, such a tool wouldn't care about operating system or database
version so that I could compare, say, a DB2 V8.2 table from DB2 on
Linux/Unix/Windows with a DB2 V7 table from OS/390 but that's not
necessarily an absolute "must-have" feature.

I would imagine IBM has tools like this for their internal testing of DB2
but I'm not sure if these tools - or their commercial equivalents - are
available to the public.

Can anyone enlighten me?
--
Rhino

Nov 12 '05 #1

kenfar

Rhino,

There are quite a few commercial and open source products that will do
this - too many to list.

Alternatively, it isn't difficult to write one yourself - if you're
familiar with a simple language like bash, python, etc:
1. pass arguments for two databases, schemas, tables, userids,
passwords
2. export from each to local files
3. get a count of lines different: count=`diff local.dat remote.dat
| wc -l`
4. remove temp files
5. report back number of differences

Of course you could keep the diff output to see the exact lines
different.

Nov 12 '05 #2

Rhino

"kenfar" <ke****@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:11*********************@g47g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...

Rhino,

There are quite a few commercial and open source products that will do
this - too many to list.
Can you list a *few* of them? Or a generic term that will produce suitable
hits from a Google search? I haven't had much luck yet with Google, which
usually doesn't let me down. I thought "table comparison software" would get
many relevant hits but that wasn't the case.
Alternatively, it isn't difficult to write one yourself - if you're
familiar with a simple language like bash, python, etc:
1. pass arguments for two databases, schemas, tables, userids,
passwords
2. export from each to local files
3. get a count of lines different: count=`diff local.dat remote.dat
| wc -l`
4. remove temp files
5. report back number of differences

Of course you could keep the diff output to see the exact lines
different.

Yes, I'd thought of that approach but, before "re-ineventing the wheel", I
thought I'd see what already exists to do the job for me.

Rhino

Nov 12 '05 #3

Norbert Munkel

Hi,

Rhino schrieb:

"kenfar" <ke****@gmail.com> wrote in message

There are quite a few commercial and open source products that will do
this - too many to list.

Can you list a *few* of them? Or a generic term that will produce suitable
search freshmeat.net for "diff".
diff is part of every standard linux or unix distribution I am aware of.
db2look + diff + 5 Minutes of scripting should do the job.
Alternatively, it isn't difficult to write one yourself - if you're

Yes, I'd thought of that approach but, before "re-ineventing the wheel", I
thought I'd see what already exists to do the job for me.

No, you are not reinventing the wheel. diff IS the wheel. You are
thinking about reinventing a bike for a 10yrds-run. ;-)

If you want it coloured and clickable, search freshmeat.net.

tcb,

Norbert

Nov 12 '05 #4

Brian Tkatch

On Windows, the DOS command fc will do the job as well.

B.

Nov 12 '05 #5

EDWARD LIPSON

Are you looking for schema comparison or data comparison? I'll assume
schema as the question seems to lead that way.
BMC has SmartDBA Cockpit, free annual renuable license. It has a DDL
compare feature. Patrol Change Manager is much more comprehensive and
will generate scripts to sync one version to another.
Embarcadero's DBArtisan has a visual diff too. Licensed product.
You might use a DB2LOOK and ExamDiff from purestyle (freeware
version).

These are just some of the many tools out there.

R > Is anyone aware of software - freeware, shareware or commercial - that could
R > be used to compare two tables and highlight any differences between them?

Edward Lipson via Relaynet.org Moondog
ed***********@moondog.com el*****@bankofny.com
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Nov 12 '05 #6

sualeh.fatehi

Rhino,

SchemaCrawler is written in Java, and is a command line tool, with an
ant task too. It can dump your database schema (metadata), as well as
data into a text file (plain text, CSV or XHTML). All of these text
file formats are designed to be diff-ed. (You will need to use your
favorite diff tool to do the diffs.) It is platform (database and OS)
independent.

SchemaCrawler is open source, and hosted on SourceForge.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schemacrawler/

Sualeh.

Nov 12 '05 #7