Supported sources
The article recounts supported comparison and synchronization sources for schema and data comparisons.
SQL Examiner compares database schemas; SQL Data Examiner compares data. SQL Examiner Suite includes both products.
Starting version 2008, SQL Examiner, SQL Data Examiner, and, consequently, SQL Examiner Suite are available in Professional and Standard editions. The Professional editions include all features of the products; there are some limitations in the Standard editions.
Supported SQL Examiner Suite versions
We guarantee that all versions of the products work with stated on-premise and cloud databases at the product's End of Support date. If a database vendor or cloud provider changes a database which leads to compatibility issues, we update the products to fix these issues if this change was made before End of Support date. We do not update not supported versions of the SQL Examiner and SQL Data Examiner.
| Major version | End of Support |
|---|---|
| SQL Examiner Suite 2018 and earlier1 | Not supported |
| SQL Examiner Suite 2022 | December 31, 2023 |
| SQL Examiner Suite 2023 | December 31, 20242 |
1 Includes both SQL Examiner 2018 and SQL Data Examiner 2018. The support period is the same for both products. The same applied to SQL Examiner Suite 2022 and 2023.
2 The specified End of Support date is a minimal guaranteed support timeframe and can be extended later.
Schema comparison
SQL Examiner compares and synchronizes databases schemas (structures). The most recent version is SQL Examiner 2023 (builds 9.0.x.x).
SQL Examiner primarily purposed to compare and synchronize databases running on servers of the same types (i.e., SQL Server with SQL Server, Oracle with Oracle, etc.). At the same time, comparison and synchronization of different versions are fully supported (SQL Server 2012 with SQL Server 2019).
Cross-platform schema comparison
The Professional edition of the SQL Examiner supports cross-platform comparison and synchronization (i.e., SQL Server with Oracle, Oracle with PostgreSQL, and so on). You can compare and synchronize tables (data type mapping is supported) and views. However, you cannot compare text objects (stored procedures, functions, triggers, etc.).
Versions prior to 2023 (2022 and earlier) did not support comparison of views and could only compare tables.
Source types
SQL Examiner can read schemas from live databases (databases that run on database servers), database snapshots (single-file definition of database schema, created with SQL Examiner), database backups, and database creation script. Supported source types depend on product edition.
| Professional edition | Standard edition | |
|---|---|---|
| Live database | Yes | Yes |
| Snapshot | Yes | Yes |
| Backup file1, 2, 3 | Yes | |
| Creation script4, 5 | Yes |
1 Only SQL Server backups are currently supported.
2 Only full, uncompressed backups are supported. A backup file can contain multiple backups.
3 Backup files are read-only. SQL Examiner cannot update a backup file.
4 SQL Examiner 2009-2018 works with SQL Server creation scripts only. SQL Examiner 2022 and later versions work with creation scripts for all supported databases.
5 A single-file script or a folder that contains multiple scripts for a single database can be used as a comparison source.
On-premise databases
The table below states the officially supported databases and versions for each version of SQL Examiner. Although typically old versions of SQL Examiner can work with more recent versions of databases than stated in the table (but features introduced in these versions are not supported), we cannot guarantee that there are no issues in such configurations, and these configurations are not supported.
| SQL Server1 | Oracle2,3 | MySQL | PostgreSQL2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SQL Examiner 2023 | 7.0–2022 | 10g–21c | 5.0–8.0 | 9.0–15 |
| SQL Examiner 2022 | 7.0–2019 | 10g–21c | 5.0–8.0 | 9.0–13 |
| SQL Examiner 2018 | 7.0–2017 | 10g–18c | 5.0–5.7 | 9.0–9.5 |
| SQL Examiner 2016 | 7.0–2016 | 10g–11g | 5.0–5.7 | 9.0–9.5 |
| SQL Examiner 2015 | 7.0–2014 | 10g–11g | 5.0–5.6 | |
| SQL Examiner 2012 | 7.0–2012 | 10g–11g | 5.0–5.5 | |
| SQL Examiner 2010 | 7.0–2008 | 10g–11g | 5.0–5.5 | |
| SQL Examiner 2009 | 7.0–2008 | |||
| SQL Examiner 2008 | 7.0–2008 | |||
| SQL Examiner 1.x | 7.0–2008 |
1 In this article, where SQL Server 2008 is mentioned, both SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 are implied.
2 Despite stated support of the specific Oracle or PostgreSQL version, older versions of SQL Examiner do not compare and synchronize some objects of particular types in supported versions of Oracle or PostgreSQL. See Supported Oracle objects and Supported PostgreSQL objects below.
3 The first supported Oracle version is 10g. We also tested SQL Examiner with Oracle 9i, and it works, but this configuration is not officially supported.
SQL Local DB
Starting from version 2015, SQL Examiner supports SQL Local DB, introduced in the SQL Server 2012.
SQL Server Compact
Starting from version 2015, SQL Examiner supports SQL Server Compact 3.5 and SQL Server Compact 4.0 databases.
Cloud databases
We tested SQL Examiner 2018, 2022, and 2023 with the following cloud databases:
- Azure SQL Database
- Amazon RDS for SQL Server
- Amazon RDS for Oracle
- Amazon RDS for MySQL
- Amazon RDS for MariaDB
- Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Supported Oracle objects
Oracle support was added in SQL Examiner 2010. Different versions of SQL Examiner do not support some object types. The table below shows database objects supported by each SQL Examiner version.
| 20231 | 2022 | 2018 | 2016 | 2015 | 2012 | 2010 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tables | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Views | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Stored Procedures | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| User Defined Functions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Triggers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sequences | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Packages | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Comments | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Users | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Roles | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Generated columns | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Invisible columns and indexes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Identity columns | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Clusters | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Partitioned tables and indexes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Bitmap Indexes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| User Defined Types | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Materialized Views | Yes1 | ||||||
| Synonyms | Yes1 |
1 Support for Materialized Views, Synonyms and some other object types of Oracle 21c have been added on July 17, 2023. For more details, see the SQL Examiner Suite 2023.3 release notes.
Supported PostgreSQL objects
SQL Examiner has worked with PostgreSQL since version 2016. The table below shows database objects supported by each SQL Examiner version.
Despite stated support for all PostgreSQL objects, some minor PostgreSQL 14 and 15 features and object properties are not supported at the date of release of SQL Examiner Suite 2023.
Support for these features will be added in subsequent release later in May 2023. See the SQL Examiner Suite 2023 release notes and SQL Examiner Suite 2023 changelog for details.
| 20231 | 2022 | 2018 | 2016 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tables | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Views | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| User Defined Functions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Triggers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sequences | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Schemas | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Roles | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Permissions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Comments | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Domains | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Event Triggers | Yes | Yes | ||
| Procedures | Yes | Yes | ||
| Materialized Views | Yes | Yes | ||
| Security Policies | Yes | Yes | ||
| Statistics | Yes | Yes | ||
| Collations | Yes | Yes |
1 The support for minor features of PostgreSQL 15 and prior versions has been added on May 31, 2023. For more details, see the SQL Examiner Suite 2023.2 release notes.
Version control systems
Starting from version 2009, the Professional edition of the SQL Examiner can work with database creation scripts stored in various source control systems. Scripts can be either read from or updated in these systems. The following source control systems are supported:
- Git (starting from SQL Examiner 2015)
- Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS)
- TortoiseSVN
- Perforce
- Microsoft SourceSafe
Data comparison
SQL Data Examiner compares and synchronizes data in various data sources. The most recent version is SQL Data Examiner 2023 (builds 9.0.x.x).
Cross-platform data comparison and synchronization
The Professional edition of the SQL Data Examiner supports cross-platform data comparison and synchronization, i.e., you can compare and synchronize data between any combination of the supported sources.
On-premise databases
| SQL Server | Access | Oracle | MySQL | PostgreSQL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SQL Examiner 2023 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SQL Examiner 2022 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SQL Examiner 2018 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SQL Examiner 2016 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SQL Examiner 2015 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| SQL Examiner 2012 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| SQL Examiner 2010 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| SQL Examiner 2009 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| SQL Examiner 2008 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| SQL Examiner 1.x | Yes | Yes | Yes |
SQL Local DB
Starting from version 2015, SQL Data Examiner supports SQL Local DB, introduced in the SQL Server 2012.
SQL Server Compact
Starting from version 2012, SQL Data Examiner supports SQL Server Compact 3.5 and SQL Server Compact 4.0 databases.
Other data sources
In addition to mentioned above, the SQL Data Examiner works with the following data sources.
| Excel | Flat files | OLE DB1 | ODBC1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SQL Examiner 2023 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SQL Examiner 2022 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SQL Examiner 2018 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SQL Examiner 2016 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SQL Examiner 2015 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SQL Examiner 2012 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| SQL Examiner 2010 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| SQL Examiner 2009 | Yes | Yes | ||
| SQL Examiner 2008 | Yes | Yes | ||
| SQL Examiner 1.x | Yes | Yes |
1 Although SQL Data Examiner supports OLE DB, we recommend using ODBC as ODBC is supported by many more sources and provides better compatibility.
2 We have not tested SQL Data Examiner with all possible ODBC data sources (this is impossible), so there may be compatibility issues when working with some sources. If you encounter problems when working with ODBC data sources, please contact us and we will try to solve the problem.
