A while back I wrote a short post about the tablediff.exe command-line application. As a quick reminder, the tablediff.exe utilty can be used to compare table schema and/or data and generate a T-SQL script which can be used to bring the two in sync.

I wrote a short query that can be used to geenrate the tablediff.exe commands that can be used to compare the table structure and contents. The query uses the ANSI-compatible INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES view. The script can be reviewed below.

SET NOCOUNT ON;

DECLARE @sourceserver nvarchar(128);
DECLARE @sourcedatabase nvarchar(128);
DECLARE @sourceschema nvarchar(128);
DECLARE @sourcetable nvarchar(128);

DECLARE @destinationserver nvarchar(128);
DECLARE @destinationdatabase nvarchar(128);

DECLARE @compareschema bit;

SET @sourceserver = 'SRVSQL1\INST2';
SET @sourcedatabase = 'AdventureWorks';
--SET @sourceschema = 'HumanResources'; -- comment line for all
--SET @sourcetable = 'Department'; -- comment line for all

SET @destinationserver = 'SRVSQL1\INST2';
SET @destinationdatabase = 'AdventureWorks';

SET @compareschema = 0;

SELECT N'tablediff -sourceserver "' + @sourceserver + '" -sourcedatabase "' + @sourcedatabase +
'" -sourceschema "' + TABLE_SCHEMA + '" -sourcetable "' + TABLE_NAME +
'" -destinationserver "' + @destinationserver + '" -destinationdatabase "' + @destinationdatabase +
'" -destinationschema "' + TABLE_SCHEMA + '" -destinationtable "' + TABLE_NAME +
'" -destinationlocked -c ' + CASE @compareschema WHEN 1 THEN '-strict ' ELSE '' END +
'-f -o "./log/' + TABLE_SCHEMA + '.' + TABLE_NAME + '.log"'
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'
AND TABLE_SCHEMA = ISNULL(@sourceschema, TABLE_SCHEMA)
AND TABLE_NAME = ISNULL(@sourcetable, TABLE_NAME)
ORDER BY TABLE_SCHEMA ASC, TABLE_NAME ASC

The output will be similar to the below:

tablediff -sourceserver "SRVSQL1\INST2" -sourcedatabase "AdventureWorks"
    -sourceschema "HumanResources" -sourcetable "Department"
    -destinationserver "SRVSQL1\INST2" -destinationdatabase "AdventureWorks"
    -destinationschema "HumanResources" -destinationtable "Department"
    -destinationlocked -c -f -o "./log/HumanResources.Department.log"

After testing the tablediff.exe commands a T-SQL file is generated and which, with some creativity, can be included in a batch file together with the FORFILES and SQLCMD utilities. But that’s another part of the solution…