The development of UltraDiff DB

Why did we do it?

We were working on an application upgrade that changed and extended the way various column values were used in existing databases.

We needed a simple QA tool to compare data from the before/after results of scripted batch changes and which would also allow us to check application updates easily.

Value for money

Having researched and tested other similar products on offer, we felt that a price of several hundred dollars for such a tool was just a little unreasonable.

We wanted software that gave us a good return on our investment.

Fast and accurate

We did find several sensibly priced difference tools out there and tested them in a real live environment, but none of them gave the right results.

Most seemed to work like traditional textual "diff" engines but were variously unable to match the rows correctly, resync themselves around a difference or seemed to run for ever.

For example, one product on test took 75 minutes to compare about 4000 records and still reported rubbish!

When you need a database difference tool, it's critical that it works quickly even on large volumes and, most important of all, that the results are accurate.

Our solution for the real world

So, we decided to do it ourselves - in a way that would suit our 'real-world' working.

At least we could guarantee the integrity of the results - or fix things if it did break!