SQL Data Compare^™

Yes. SQL Data Compare has been designed to work with the very largest commercial databases (e.g. SAP in Fortune 100 companies). For example, we've successfully tested the SQL Data Campare on databases 100s GB in size, with 150,000+ database objects.

The latest version is SQL Data Compare 6.1.1. If you are a new user, you can download it after filling in a short form (this enables you to download the toolbelt, but you can choose to only use SQL Data Compare). If you are a current customer, you can upgrade to the latest version by choosing "Check for updates" from the "Help" menu of the program.

Red Gate's SQL Data Compare works only with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.

To find out how much it will cost to upgrade to the latest version, please see our page about upgrading.

You can run SQL Data Compare 6 in parallel with previous versions of SQL Data Compare.

Again, this is possible. Please contact us for further information.

By visiting the relevant licensing page on this website, you can read full license details.

To redistribute the SQL Data Compare command line tool with your applications, you must purchase a SQL Toolkit license.

The activation server looks for the XML data in the activation request. HTML formatted emails make it difficult for the activation server to locate the activation request in the message, and when it's not found, the server simply gives up and discards the email. To prevent this, always ensure that activation requests via email are in plain-text format rather than HTML.

If SQL Data Compare causes you to run out of hard disk space, you may want to move SQL Data Compare's temporary workspace to another drive or folder. To do this, go to the Control Panel, double-click System, then click the Advanced tab, and finally, Environment Variables. Create a new variable called RGTEMP and replace the path with the temporary folder you would like to use. In order for the change to take effect, you must log out of Windows and back in again. Note this setting will only affect other Red Gate programs.

SQL Data Compare will use much less disk space if you limit the kinds of records that are compared. For instance, if you choose not to show identical values in results (found in the Options tab of the Project Configurations window), the temporary files that SQL Data Compare creates will be much smaller.

The only limitations on the amount of data you can actually compare are dictated by the amount of disk space available to SQL Data Compare.

Yes, it works on all data types and all tables. If you are having a problem, please make sure you are using the latest version of SQL Data Compare, as the latest version is even more versatile than the previous version.

You may not compare views or set custom comparison keys. Tables may only be compared if they have a unique index, primary key or unique constraint. Non-persisted computed columns are not retrievable from the backup. WHERE clauses can't be used when comparing from a backup.

SQL Data Compare works out which columns are common between the two databases and compares the contents of those columns. If the two databases are radically different (e.g. if the primary keys are different, or if column data types are different) then you can use the ability to map columns, tables and owners in each database even if the names differ. You can use SQL Compare to synchronize the structure of your databases and then use SQL Data Compare to compare the contents if you don't wish to use mapping.

Yes, the command line version of SQL Data Compare comes with SQL Data Compare Pro.

No. Since version 5 of SQL Data Compare, you can set up a custom comparison key on tables that do not have a primary key, unique index or unique constraint.

Yes. It will generate the scripts necessary to push data for a table from one server to another, dropping foreign keys and then recreating them.

Yes, SQL Data Compare fully supports the new data types and syntax of SQL Server 2005.