used in tandem with Database Comprisons

[miken_emno]

Hi

I love using BeyondCompare, esp in conjunction with RedGate's also simple yet excellent SQL Compare family.

Basically I run a bunch of automated processes which regression test our system. We top and tail that with BeyondCompare and SQL Data Compare. BC tells us if any of our output files (XML, PDFs, txt, data, csv) have changed between releases, SQL Data Compare does the same for the database.

Of course we expect some changes to happen as the software rolls on, but both are excellent tools at spotting the "inadvertant" changes that sometimes get introduced in the software devt cycle ;-)

We even generate flat files out of the Data Compare that tells us how a test has performed on release 1.0 say and then generate similar files on 1.2, with BeyondCompare highlighting the real differences.

We have also written some custom conversion programns to handle one or two proprietary flat file formats that we have - in VB.NET

Saves hours of leg work

[miken_emno]

Re: used in tandem with Database Comparison

Thought a picture would speak a 1,000 words. Attached image shows how I have used RedGate's DBCompare (phase 1) and then BeyondCompare in harmony (phase 2)

Phase 1 = generate output from SQL Data Compare which highlights how values have changed during a regression test

nb: <24><25> in the screen shot means this column/row was 24 at start of test and 25 at the end (OLD release), thats how RedGate reports what it has found

Phase 2 = run same tests again on NEW version of software AND then compare what happened vs OLD, to see if we can spot genuine and unexpected changes.

This is a classic example where the column/row was being changed by accident i.e programmer had changed software to implement a change but it had an unexpected knock-on effect

PS: The viewer used is the column driven DataViewer btw(download it from ScooterSoftware's web site)

Screen Shot