Re: [OT], Database Comparer

[Sam Watkins <swatkins@fastmail.fm>]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2004 at 01:39:29PM -0500, Tong wrote:
> I'm looking for such a tool (Database Comparer). Any suggestions?

I wrote something in perl that does this, it's called "dbischema".  It can get
the database schema from an existing database, save it in an xml file, and
update a database to match the xml file.  It works on mysql, msql and postgresql,
and it's possible to write more modules to make it work with other DBMSs.

It's quite powerful, and has been used to support a large company for quite a
while.

This program is theoretically owned by a company I used to work for, but
they're open-source friendly and I don't think they'd mind if you use it.
I can check if you like, they would probably let me open-source it.

I even have a Debian package :)


Here's the help text, which probably won't be very helpful!


$ dbischema --help
 
Usage: dbischema [options] [command] [arguments/redirection]

options:
  --help              print help
  -d, --dbms DBMS     Use the specified DBMS - required by many commands
  -u, --user user     User name for the DBMS
  -p, --pass pass     Password for the DBMS
  -h, --host          database server host
  -P, --port          database server port (not implemented yet!)
  -D, --dir dir       Use the specified directory as a work directory
  -v, --verbose       Make lots of noise
  -q, --quiet         No commentary
  -l, --list          list all known DBMS, and local databases
  -F, --force         use force if necessary, without asking (for drop)
  -C, --no-checksum   don't use file checksum to accelerate update if no changes
  -k, --keep-dir      don't remove the working directory after success
  -b, --database db   specify a different database name to that in the schema

commands:
  dump      database [table(s)]  >  sql
  parse     <  sql  >  real
  abstract  <  real  >  abstract
  realize   <  abstract  >  real
  merge     part_1 ... part_n  >  merged
  diff      old  new  >  diff
  create    <  real  >  create
  alter     old  new  diff  >  alter
  execute   actions  [real]
  drop      database
  report    <  diff  >  report
  update    abstract | directory
  verify    abstract | directory



let me know if you'd like to have a copy of it.


Sam