Managing Changes in MySQL Databases
Database change management is a difficult and time-consuming process for MySQL administrators and application developers. The necessity to find differences in MySQL databases can occur for the following reasons: moving from development to production, making changes to a newly installed production database or implementing an updated version of the existing database. Synchronization of MySQL databases often impacts dependent database objects and underlying data, so the preliminary process of detecting and analyzing these dependencies is very sophisticated and prone to error. Finding all related MySQL schema changes is a complex task and analyzing the effects of data synchronization is time consuming, as well as applying changes to a database requires special caution.
Change management software can make the process of MySQL database synchronization easier because it increases the reliability and reduces risks of human errors. Special synchronization tools for MySQL can automate database propagation and deployment by performing such tasks as generation and executing of the SQL commands necessary to move some MySQL database to the desired version.
In general, the task of synchronizing MySQL databases can be divided into two separate subtasks – schema synchronization and data synchronization. Both of these subtasks are important and require corresponding MySQL database change management software.
Managing MySQL Schema Changes
This tool for comparing MySQL databases is specially designed to discover differences in their structures. EMS DB Comparer for MySQL automates the process of MySQL database schema comparison and synchronization and allows you to view and eliminate all or selected differences in compared MySQL database schemas. When using this utility, MySQL database synchronization process becomes simple and intuitive and manual creation of complex SQL scripts becomes unnecessary.
EMS DB Comparer for MySQL supports comparison and synchronization of MySQL databases or schemas on different servers as well as on a single server, comparison of all database objects or selected ones only, comparison by all or by selected properties of objects only; it can also visually represent the differences between MySQL databases with details and modification scripts for the different objects. EMS DB Comparer synchronizes MySQL databases according to the user defined parameters and if it comes across any errors during synchronization, it will display them in the log of script execution. The tool provides the ability to generate reports with database differences, save and load projects with all their parameters, work with built-in SQL Script Editor with syntax highlight and has a wide variety of options for MySQL database schema comparison and synchronization. EMS DB Comparer for MySQL has a user friendly wizard driven interface with several languages available and supports latest MySQL versions.
Managing Data Changes in MySQL Tables
To compare data in MySQL tables you may use this tool for MySQL data comparing. EMS Data Comparer for MySQL is a powerful and easy-to-use utility for MySQL data comparison and synchronization. As in the case with the EMS DB Comparer, you can view all the differences in compared MySQL table data and execute an automatically generated script to eliminate these differences. Flexible customization of the MySQL data comparison and synchronization process will enable you to select tables and fields for comparison automatically or manual, define MySQL comparison parameters and tune many other options. This flexible and intuitively comprehensive program allows you to work with several projects simultaneously, alter modification scripts or save them to a file for future use, perform partial MySQL data synchronization, export comparison results to MS Excel sheets, use BLOB viewer for viewing BLOB fields content and more. Many other features are implemented to make your MySQL database data comparison process easy and fast.
Many hosting companies may block access to the MySQL server from outside the hosting company’s network. EMS DB Comparer and EMS Data Comparer have SSH and HTTP tunneling support to connect to the remote MySQL server of a hosting company when the direct connection is not available. Also these utilities can help to automate MySQL database schemas comparison and synchronization task due to the helpful Console Application that is included in the installation package.
Conclusions on MySQL comparison tools
EMS DB Comparer and EMS Data Comparer can be used separately or in a complex with EMS SQL Management Studio for MySQL - comprehensive set of programs that allows you achieve higher availability and better performance during data maintenance and MySQL administration.