dbForge Schema Compare for Oracle for Windows

User Reviews

• Easy UI, 10x quicker than SQL Developer

  RebeccahQPNovember 7, 2012

  Pros

  1. Simple to use. 2. Compare screen is well laid out. It clearly identifies DB objects new, missing, or changed from one schema instance to the other, shows a side-by-side comparison for the selected object that navigates well, and shows the schema update script at the bottom. 3. Shows all the changes I care about. There is some configurability regarding what differences to ignore. 4. An order of magnitude faster than SQL Developer 3.2.20 (7 minutes for SQL Developer, vs well under a minute for dbForge Schema Compare to compare the two DB instances I'm interested in) 5. Can save snapshots in XML format, for checking into revision control system. Can compare two DB connections, two snapshots, or a DB connection and a snapshot. 6. Has a commandline option.

  Cons

  My only real complaint is not going to be a con for most people: I can't quite get the commandline option to do what I want, which is to open the GUI from the commandline, prepopulated with two snapshot files specified on the commandline. This is admittedly an uncommon request. Most people want the commandline option to integrate with their build and deployment automation processes, so they don't want it to open the GUI. I want to integrate with StarTeam revision control software as an alternate Diff program, and I like the visual compare of the GUI. I've found a few minor bugs that do not affect my ability to use the product. See below.

  Summary

  The minor bugs/issues I've found to date: 1. I found that when I'm moving down the list of changed objects one at a time, and then unchecking each one as I've finished making use of the difference information, when I go on to the next object on the list, the update script doesn't change to reflect the object I've moved on to - it still shows the previous object I was looking at. This is easy to work around; I just navigate away to another object and then back to the one I want to look at next. 2. Help for the commandline is scattered all over the place, but I did get a reply when I posted about this on the Help forum. They say they are going to address that. 3. Didn't report a difference between NUMBER(*,0) and INTEGER datatypes. I'm still trying to decide whether or not this matters. I don't think so, and I'm definitely glad not to be bothered with it. Both SQL Developer and RedGate reported it as a difference, and because it was so prevalent, it made it impossible for me to see the real differences. 4. Gives an error message (or maybe it's a warning) when I have a sequence and a trigger that increments the sequence, both with the same name. I can just OK through the alert, though, and everything is fine. On the whole, I am finding this a very handy piece of software. Note: the commandline option is only available with the Pro version.

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