DbComparison

Introduction

Welcome to DbComparison, which is a small Java utility that can compare the layout of 2 databases. It is run from the command line,
and it can show the comparison results on screen or write them to a file in various formats.

Features

DbComparison has the following features :

• it uses JDBC to connect to the databases (currently only MySql)
• it currently only compares the tabel layouts, comparison of other things such as views is planned
• it can export the comparison results in the following formats :
• to standard out
• to a text file
• to an HTML page
• to an XML file
• it runs as a command line tool
• the connection parameters can be read from a configuration file

Documentation

Installation

DbComparison can be downloaded from here. A Java JRE version 1.4 is needed in order to run this program. Either the
environment variable JAVA_HOME has to be set, or the java executable has to be in the path.

In order to install DbComparison, you have to download the binary distribution from here. Unzip or untar this file, which will
create a dbcomparison directory.  In this directory, open the file dbcomparison.bat using a text editor. Here's how this file looks like :

This file needs to be edited to add the JDBC drivers for you database. Note that currently only MySql is supported. To add the driver,
change the following line :

set JDBC_DRIVERS=

into :

set JDBC_DRIVERS=C:\libraries\mysql-connector-java-3.1.8\mysql-connector-java-3.1.8-bin.jar

This assumes that the JDBC driver was installed in the directory C:\libraries\mysql-connector-java-3.1.8. This will be different on your system.

Running

DbComparison is run from the command line. The following options are supported :

usage: DbComparison [options]

 -c,--connection1      Connection string for first DB

 -d,--connection2      Connection string for second DB

 -f,--file             File to export to

 -h,--help             Display this help

 -l,--login1           Login for first DB

 -m,--login2           Login for second DB

 -p,--passwd1          Password for first DB

 -q,--passwd2          Password for second DB

 -t,--type             Type of export (stdout, text, html, xml)

 -u,--useconfigfile    Name of config file

The idea is that you use the -c, -l and -p parameters to give the connection details for the first database, and -d, -m and -q for the
second database. Additionally you can specify the output format using -t, where stdout is the default. The file to be saved to is
specified with -f. Note that existing files are overwritten. All of these parameters have equivalent long versions.

The -u parameter allows you to use a configuration file. If this parameter is used, then the configuration file will be read first, after
which any of the other parameters are applied. Here's an example of the configuration file :
The parameters are specified as key/value pairs, with and equal sign between them. The key can be the long or short version
of the parameter name.

An example command line invocation is as follows :
This will use the example_config.txt file as configuration file. The equivalent using the command line arguments, is as follows :
This should all be typed in on one line.

Output formats

The stdout format is as follows :
This is the same as the text output, which will be saved to a file.

The HTML and XML output can be seen by clicking on their links.