DataCompare 8 w/project w/custom mappings. How to load?

[tobsters]

I saw this reply elsewhere...

Line 65 shows the method ReplayUserActions, which allows the mappings to be accessed from the project file.

And then in another answer forum while searching for ReplayUserActions (a V7 option) there was a mention that it moved in V8 from Brian Donohue:

Also, don't forget to run ReplayUserActions to get your mappings from the project file. This was moved in SDK v8:
http://labs.red-gate.com/index.php/SQL_Data_Compare_project

When I go to this link it pulls up the generic Labs site with nothing that I can use to find out this information. Extremely frustrating!

Also is there some documentation on the SDK 8 somewhere?

Thanks
Toby

[tobsters]

Followup...

OK, after more research on the forums site I found suggestions back in April 2010 that I need to just build all of the custom mappings and other custom settings inside of code and maintain BOTH the project file for the GUI and the VS project for the API application. The reason given was:

"It might be a bit more work to set up, but it will guard against any corrupt project files, the unreliability of the old replayuseractions method and any future upgrades that change the format of the project file."

OK, I understand all of that and those reasons seem to be valid. But I work in an environment where if my automated upload to a data warehouse is out of whack with a predetermined threshold of data changes allowed in one day I need to go and run the project in the GUI and verify the data changes and then update them then through the GUI.

I used to be able to do this until we upgraded our SQL servers from a mix of 2K and 2K5 to exclusively 2K8. The old version of RG Toolbelt 4&5 used to allow me to use a simple XML file to set up custom mappings. That meant I could keep my mappings synched without having to redo the project every time because the structure of my Data Warehouse is changing frequently with new data coming on board.

That is why I am looking for a way to either maintain a config file or just a simple project file that will run both the GUI and an API application.

Suggestions? Am I missing the forest for the trees?

Thanks

[Brian Donahue]

Hello,

Thanks for reviving this most entertaining topic. Our developers wanted to keep ReplayUserActions out of the public API, for reasons that were not made clear to me. But this approach is just too impractical -- you can't have proper project support without ReplayUserActions. So the support team have taken on the support for it ourselves because even if it has problems it's still better than nothing.

The short story is that we do keep track of this undocumented API call and use it liberally on the SDK wiki because it's just not nice to make our customers have to reverse-engineer the API to write something that's already there.

Links to the SDK docs (such as they are) are at http://www.red-gate.com/supportcenter/Product.aspx?p=SQL%20Comparison%20SDK

and incidentally, the SDK wiki http://sdk.red-gate.com/index.php/Main_Page . Labs is now dedicated to labs tools.
_________________
Brian Donahue
Technical Support
Red Gate Software Ltd.
44 (0)870 160 0037 ext 8521
US and CAN 1-866-RED GATE ext 8521

[tobsters]

Thank you Brian! Glad I could provide some entertainment...

I am very grateful that you replied and that your team took on the support for this feature, that saved me a ton of headaches and upkeep on this project. The solution worked wonderfully.

For anyone looking for an example using the undocumented "feature" in the SDK version 8 its here: http://sdk.red-gate.com/index.php/SQL_Data_Compare_project.

Keep up the good work.
Toby