Data diff tab
- Opened from:
- Applicable tab-specific toolbar actions:
- Refresh information from database. Current position and page will be reset
- Export to Excel
- Show all, new and changed, new, changed records. Current position and page will be reset
- Jump to the next, previous change
- Select all, none, invert selection on the left, all, none, invert selection on the right side
- Merge left selected records to the right side, right selected records to the left side
- Delete selected records on the left side, selected records on the right side
- Applicable object types: Tables and Views
This tab allows to compare and merge data for a particular table or view (for view only compare). Highlights new and changed records, specific changed fields in the changed row:
Vertical toolbar between two panels contains additional tab-specific actions:
- 'Column mapping' opens Custom data diff dialog to specify key columns, which columns to show and how to map them if you want to compare columns with changed names
- or 'Compare definition' opens table/view definition in table structure diff tab for tables and text diff for views
- Ignore case (for the text data)
- Ignore leading and trailing whitespaces (for the text data, this option also makes NULL and empty string to be considered as equal)
Each row has a selection checkbox nearby - so you can select the number of rows with the mouse or with the Space button from the keyboard and do some further actions with selected rows - merge or delete. Column headers for non-key columns also have selection checkboxes - so you can merge only required columns. Once you have selected number of rows and clicked merge or delete toolbar button, it will show you the Execute script dialog that will contain SQL script with desired action, so you can review it before apply:
Top panel contains:
- Paging control with page number and page size (on the right side). You can disable paging by specifying 0 as page size. But for large amount of data it is highly recommended to use paging for better performance
- Changes summary for each side: total, new, changed and new+changed row count for the whole table and for current page, selected row count
- Selected column names
Bottom panel shows selected line from both sides, providing easier comparison of changed values. Non-key string/text column headers are marked with ◁ triangle character, specifying that click on such column header opens a Text diff tab with this column values pair (can be useful for large or multiline strings).
Data grid key columns are marked with a 🔑 key character. Data grid allows sorting on key columns and comparable columns, by mouse click on column name. Sorted columns are marked with a ▲ black triangle showing the sort direction. Sortable columns are marked with empty triangles. Not every column can be sortable. To be sortable, a column must exist on both sides, it must have the same data type on both sides and this data type must not be a text, ntext, image, binary, varbinary, geography, geometry or xml.
See also:
- How it works - Data providing more details on how data diff works, particularly it provides explanations for No comparison key(s). Result can be truncated. and Sorting on non-key column(s) warnings
- Known Issues to check for possible other limitations and issues
Free version limitations:
- Table must have a compatible primary key
- Sorting allowed only for primary key column
- Not available for Views
- Limited paging
- No bottom panel
- No Excel export
- No jump to the next/previous change
- No changes highlight in scrollbar
- Vertical toolbar has only ignore case/whitespace actions
Last updated: 2024-04-23