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I need to sync table structures, stored procedures, triggers, data, etc. between environments. There are dev, QA, and production environments. I am in a Microsoft-centric environment.

What tools within SSMS and/or Visual Studio can sync SQL Server machines/databases? Thanks.

Tarzan
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3 Answers3

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You can purchase SQL Compare from Red-Gate.

Oded
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I found a Schema Compare utility in Visual Studio. It is included with the premium, ultimate, and perhaps other editions of Visual Studio.

To use it:

  1. Open Visual Studio
  2. Click "Data" on the menu bar
  3. Click "Schema Compare"

This utility is awesome. It is like WinMerge or BeyondCompare but optimized for SQL Server database objects. This should definitely be better known within the DBA and developer communities. I've worked with MS development tools since 1993 and just learned about it today. Cheers!

Tarzan
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Very cheap/simple solution:

If the sync is one way only (for example, only from production to dev/QA), then how about just making full backups of your database and restoring them on the dev/QA servers?

At work, we do all our development in a dev database that's essentially a restored backup of the production database from yesterday evening.

Here's how we set this up:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7229799/how-to-create-copy-of-production-sql-database/7229959#7229959

Community
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Christian Specht
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