Notes & articles

Release notes - version 8.xx

Version 8.50 – October 28, 2010

New features

• A free add-in for SQL Server Management Studio that enables you to set data sources to compare and synchronize from within SQL Server Management Studio
• Fast deployment and Fast deployment projects: synchronization with one click (Pro feature)
• Support of handling databases under SQL Source Control (using the add-in)

Changes

• SQL Changeset has been deprecated with the release of SQL Compare 8.50. For support information for SQL Changeset, see: Getting started with SQL Changeset
• New project dialog option Script folder has been renamed to Source Control, Script folder is a sub option of that

Version 8.2 – May 10, 2010

SQL Compare 8.2 is a minor release, including a number of bug fixes.

These fixes include:

• Better handling of encrypted objects
• SQL Compare now correctly synchronizes the user permission: View Change Tracking
• The command line interface now correctly displays script parser errors
• The command line interface now displays a synchronization script correctly when synchronizing two scripts folders
• The interactive HTML report can now be viewed without an internet connection
• Other minor user interface issues

Version 8.1 – July 16, 2009

SQL Compare 8.1 is a minor release. It introduces the following features:

• The ability to share projects with SQL Data Compare
  To open a SQL Compare project in SQL Data Compare, on the Projects dialog box, select a project, right click, and click Launch in SQL Data Compare.
  
• Command line changes
  There are some changes to the command line syntax
• Support for static data in scripts folders
  SQL Data Compare 8.0 introduces the ability to store static data in scripts folders. SQL Compare 8.1 can parse these data scripts. Version 8.0 and earlier cannot parse INSERT statements in scripts folders, and therefore displays error messages when comparing data scripts.
  
  Note that SQL Compare cannot create data scripts in scripts folders.

Known issues with SQL Compare 8.1:

• Installing in a 64 bit environment
  There is a known issue that in some cases, when upgrading from version 8.0 to version 8.1 in a 64 bit environment, the installer provides incorrect progress messages. The installer displays the progress messages for a clean install, and does not instruct you to exit version 8.0
  
  If version 8.0 is running when you install version 8.1, you may encounter unexpected results.
  
  You are recommended to uninstall version 8.0 before installing version 8.1 in a 64 bit environment.
  
  
• Project compatibility
  You can open a SQL Compare 7, 6, or 5 project in version 8.1. Projects from earlier versions are not supported.
  
  You cannot open a SQL Compare 8.1 project in earlier versions, including version 8.0
  
  If you open and save a project in SQL Data Compare 8, it is converted to version 8 and cannot be opened in earlier versions.
  
  You can open a SQL Compare 8.1 (or later) project in SQL Data Compare 8.0 or later. You can open a SQL Data Compare 8.0 (or later) project in SQL Compare 8.1 or later.

Version 8.0 – February 24, 2009

SQL Compare 8.0 is a major update to SQL Compare, providing fine-grained object filtering, improvements to scripts folder support, and many usability improvements. This release also delivers numerous bug fixes and minor enhancements.

Key changes:

• Filtering rules: SQL Compare 8.0 introduces fine-grained filtering of database objects. You can now build highly expressive rules to filter out objects with a specific schema, or objects that have a particular prefix. For example, it is now easy to exclude from the comparison result stored procedures that belong to the "marketing" schema and have the "dev_" or "tmp_" prefix.
  
• Project selection and project saving: After a great deal of usability testing and research we have changed the way projects are saved. You now have the ability to explicitly save comparison projects, without having to perform a comparison. The project files are also now easier to locate and share.
• Error reporting for scripts folders: In SQL Compare Pro version 6 we introduced the ability to compare and synchronize against SQL creation scripts. Some people had extra SQL statements in their creation scripts that were intentionally not considered by SQL Compare. Examples included drop statements and certain alter statements. SQL Compare now provides detailed information on what statements are ignored, and provides warnings about which branches of conditional statements are being chosen.
• Handling target scripts as live databases: Prior versions of SQL Compare Pro could synchronize differences to creation scripts. However, as of this version, SQL Compare can also provide a migration script as well. This feature can be used to quickly generate a change script for the differences between two versions of a database schema when the target schema is stored as a set of creation scripts (for example in source control).
• Backup before synchronization: Many customers requested the ability to take a database backup automatically before synchronization. This feature is now part of SQL Compare, and you can choose between a native SQL Server backup, a SQL Compare schema snapshot, or a compressed/encrypted backup with Red Gate SQL Backup if available.
• Improved the way we display find results by showing database objects that match as well as objects that do not match a find request.

SQL Compare 8.0 also includes some bug fixes, including:

• Improved dependency resolving, including dependencies between defaults and their referenced functions
• Extended properties of certain data types being inconsistent between the live database and script folders
• Many improvements to schema mappings

See version 7.xx release notes.