Compare two SQL databases

Question

I've made a whole bunch of changes on my development machine (table definitions, stored procedures etc). It there a script or a free tool I can run which will find all the differences between development and the live server?

Answer 1

Short answer is that there is no out of the box script that will tell you the differences between two databases. It can be created using information schema views but it can be quite complex if you really want to compare everything.

I’d recommend you try one of the third party tools mentioned here to get the job done.

I’ve had good success with ApexSQL Diff, especially on large databases but you can’t go wrong with any of the tools mentioned here.

Answer 2

SQL Compare is not free, but has a 14 day free trial.

Visual Studio has a schema comparison tool too (since 2005).