SQL 2012 Schema/Data Compare In VS2010

Question

I've been searching everywhere to find out if there is a current way to do a schema and data compare for SQL 2012 database using the existing Schema/Data compares currently included in VS 2010 Ultimate.

The best I have been able to come up with is a silly add-on tool (SSDT Power Tools) that is not nearly on the same level of usability for schema compares and does not do data compares.

Unfortunately we went ahead and setup a new server with SQL 2012 and were prepared to migrate our current production to it when I learned all the good tool we used to use would not work and that there is no backwards compatibility for compares from 2012 to any previous database version with the SSDT.

I'm looking for any help resolving my issue as my alternative is to have to throw away the 2012 server and deploy everything to a 2008 R2 as our work requires us to constantly be able to do data compares.

Answer 1

A couple points of clarification. As mentioned for schema / data compares, best is to use a commercial tool, such as Red-Gate's SQL-Compare. For completeness though, I'll add a couple of other points:

1. SSDT does do schema compares across versions and editions of SQL Server. At this time it does not do data compares. For more about SSDT, check out my blog posts on that topic.

2. You may be able to mitigate the version problem by setting the database compatibility level to something less that SQL Server 2012 as shown in the picture below from SSMS.