From Geoff Hudik’s blog.

As part of my recent role in application release management, I have had to compare and sync various objects across Oracle databases. This was not fun work and I decided to evaluate some different tools to make this easier. The tool I have been working with recently is Red Gate’s Schema Compare for Oracle. In this post I provide a brief walkthrough of its basic features and offer up my thoughts on the tool as well as how I feel it compares with other alternatives. The version of the tool shown here is 1.5.0.103.

The Need

The major need I have for a database comparison and sync tool is for parallel deployments within the same environment; for example, syncing the schemas of one of our 3 development databases with another. These syncs happen at different points including when business validation starts near the end of an iteration, when parallel development is needed for application production hotfixes, or during different development or testing efforts. The other major need is for ensuring databases are largely in sync when they are expected to be, when preparing for or reviewing a deployment or troubleshooting differences in application behavior across environments.

We largely forego using such tools for a couple scenarios. First our DBAs handle larger syncs such as refreshing a development database from production. Likewise we do not use such tools for change management to deploy changes from development on up the chain to production; I discuss that somewhat in my post on the TFS Artifact Manager.

To read the full review of Red Gate’s Schema Compare for Oracle, please visit my blog.