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Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials

Overview

What is Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials?

Redgate's SQL Toolbelt Essentials includes industry-standard tools for SQL Server development & deployment, enabling users to include SQL Server databases in agile processes and enabilng developers to embed robust and scalable development practices.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Redgate SQL Compare has proved to be an invaluable tool for a variety of users in different departments across organizations. Senior …
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Pricing

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Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.red-gate.com/products/sql…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $1,209 per year per user (1-4 users)
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Product Demos

RedGate SQL Compare Demo

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Product Details

What is Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials?

Redgate's SQL Toolbelt Essentials includes industry-standard tools for SQL Server development & deployment, enabling users to include SQL Server databases in agile processes and enabilng developers to embed robust and scalable development practices.

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials Video

Overview of SQL Compare

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials Technical Details

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Frequently Asked Questions

Redgate's SQL Toolbelt Essentials includes industry-standard tools for SQL Server development & deployment, enabling users to include SQL Server databases in agile processes and enabilng developers to embed robust and scalable development practices.

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials starts at $1209.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.6.

The most common users of Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(56)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Redgate SQL Compare has proved to be an invaluable tool for a variety of users in different departments across organizations. Senior software engineers rely on it to compare schemas between development, QA, and production databases, and according to their experiences, it works flawlessly. Multiple departments use SQL Compare to identify differences between databases and gather an initial assessment of the database for potential performance issues. The application development team relies on this tool to assist with developing and generating SQL scripts for deployments, while DBAs utilize it for quick and easy comparison of different databases in various environments, including production environments. A small web development team also benefits from Redgate SQL Compare by efficiently managing SQL databases across different environments, eliminating the tedious task of comparing and synchronizing schemas. In addition, Redgate's SQL Compare proves essential in creating upgrade scripts and managing database schema changes for application upgrades and deployments. Overall, the tool is widely appreciated for its ability to synchronize database structures and code, troubleshoot issues by identifying changes in data between two times, and facilitate efficient troubleshooting and issue resolution.

Users have made several recommendations for the Red Gate SQL Compare software. The most common recommendations are:

  • Users suggest fine-tuning the functionality in complex systems with foreign key relationships.
  • Many users recommend investing in additional tools like Data Compare, Source Control, and SQL Toolbox.
  • While some find the license cost expensive, they believe it is worth the price.

Overall, users highlight areas for improvement in complex system functionality while also recognizing the value and benefits provided by the Red Gate SQL Compare software. They suggest enhancing the tool with additional features and tools to further improve its capabilities.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-13 of 13)
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Steven Gockley, MBA, MCSA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SQL Compare is an integral part of our deployment process. All of our production database deployments go through SQL compare for database objects. We have also used it in one-off scenarios in test or dev servers to save time. We not only use the tool manually but we have also used the SDK for automation. It is very flexible and easy to use.
  • UI is very intuitive.
  • SDK is flexible.
  • Lightweight and fast. Easily handles hundreds to thousands of objects in a single database.
  • UI is a little outdated.
  • It does automap columns but, when it comes to object renaming it would be nice to have more functionality. We tend to just do renames manually.
We have actually been able to use this not only manually but in our DevOps and release process, we have been able to use the SDK to add automation so certain business scenarios we can accomplish with very little effort. We are in an AWS environment with multiple AZs and Active Directories and this tool handles it with no problem. We ensure we have an available endpoint and it is easy to deploy no matter where the DB's are.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I'm a senior software engineer that works on a large web application. My primary use case for Redgate SQL Compare is for comparing schemas between, development, QA, and production databases and for that it works absolutely flawlessly. The ability to choose objects for deployment has also come in very handily in cases where I need to maintain some differences between my environments. I also use the greater suite of Redgate tools and believe the tool belt provides excellent value for myself and the other engineers in our department.
  • Allows selecting objects for deployment.
  • Table and owner mapping is also a nice touch.
  • Great number of options for customizing the deployment script being generated.
  • My tool belt sometimes loses it's license forcing me to fiddle with it to get it working again.
I think it's the best schema comparison tool available and it's both fast and customizable.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Redgate SQL compare to quickly and easily compare date between or development, test, staging and production environments. It allows us a very easy mechanism to assist in troubleshoot production or development issues. It provides a quick means of seeing differences between our different environments. Prior to using this it was very difficult to determine differences between environments.
  • Comparison of data
  • Deployment of schemas
  • Massive time saver
  • Honestly I would not change a thing about it
Well suited for
- Deployment of db schemas
- Comparison of data between environments
- Easy creation of SQL scripts
- Allows easy synchronization of databases
- Allows you to easily create deployment scripts.

Features such as these have offered massive time savings for our development group. Highly recommend this product.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SQL compare is used in the department mainly during releases and the occasional issue finding (differences between live and dev environments).
Years before we did use a source control solution, but that caused more problems than it solved, so I use this software to deploy DB changes from our dev to live platforms. It's more manual, but it gives me the opportunity to review the differences, and from time to time question the choices of the changes!
  • It allows you to set up projects for repetitive comparisions.
  • It organises object differences very well, with filters and searches available on top.
  • Redgate displays the differences between objects very clearly at script level.
  • It's created deployment scripts that you can either run yourself, or complete using the application.
  • So far so good. I have to be honest, it's not a complicated application, and so far hasn't caused me any issues or to question the choices of the developers!
Redgate is just a massive timesaving tool for releasing changes from our dev to live platforms. Being able to choose all the objects that need scripting out to alter, create, and drop statements with the click of a few buttons, taking into consideration all the dependencies, is brilliant. Coupled with that, the ability to review the differences along the way for last-minute issue spotting is hugely helpful.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used for code and database object DDL comparison to identify changes.
  • Compare DDL in multiple databases or with objects in source code repository
  • SQL code comparison in stored procs, views, indexes, triggers or just sql files
  • Pick objects to deploy changes from one server to another
  • It would be good to have an option to ignore differences changes in comments or blank lines or tabs
Very well suited for comparing DDL changes between objects on two separate databases. It does not work to compare objects with different names.
Kevin R. Zakoski | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

SQL Compare is being used by multiple departments across the organization. My area, Database Service, uses SQL Compare regularly when we're pulled in to look at performance issues. Since we have several thousand databases with many clients and a custom deployment process that doesn't necessarily deploy all objects exactly the same, we utilize SQL Compare as one of our main tools to look for differences between databases to gather an initial assessment of the database to determine if we may be missing an object, permission or any other database component.

On the application development side, they will use SQL Compare to assist with developing and generating SQL scripts for deployments.

  • Ease of use, doesn't require a lot knowledge or experience to use the tool.
  • UI is easy to navigate with several options filter content and results are grouped by content which makes comparing differences easy to find. Differences are also color coded and highlighted in code windows so you can pinpoint issues quickly.
  • Ability to pick and choose which items you want to sync at a push of a button directly to the database or generate the necessary code snippet needed to deploy to multiple databases using a deployment process.
  • Would like more filter options, like just looking for index differences between databases and tables and not seeing all the other differences that may exist in other components like triggers, extended properties, etc.
  • A 'Golden Copy', I compare multiple databases that are similar but not exactly the same but you're only can compare 2 databases at a time. I'd like to have the ability to save components from multiple sources to make a golden copy but also have the option to compare the 3 the same time.

We use SQL Compare to troubleshoot performance problems quite a bit since our data model is more like a template and not everything is 100% in sync and customization occurs between different client databases. We continually get pulled into performance issues and the developers will say Client A is performing different than Client B, why? Using SQL Compare, we usually find that one client was tuned and had indexes altered or added that weren't deployed to all clients or other objects weren't deployed correctly during the release.

On the other hand, since our data model practices allow client databases to drift I tried to create a new golden image by trying to compare multiple databases based on the same data model and found it to be a very difficult process to complete using SQL Compare. SQL Compare gave me too much information and doesn't allow enough filtering to eliminate a lot of the noise.

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I primarily use Redgate SQL Data Compare when troubleshooting issues to determine what has changed in a database between two times. It is great for ad-hoc troubleshooting, then recovering from the issue.
  • Provides many options for setting the comparison key
  • Provides flexibility about what you are comparing (database, backup, scripts)
  • Makes it easy to filter down to just what you are looking for
  • Would be cool if it could read transaction logs to find what caused the change
I think every DBA needs a tool like Redgate SQL Data Compare for day-to-day work and troubleshooting of issues.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Redgate SQL Compare is used in multiple departments within our organization. My company hadn't used Redgate products previously to my hiring, but it is spreading out through the company.
  • One of the challenges working with data, especially in different environments, is finding differences/changes that have occurred in the data. Redgate SQL Compare makes this very easy to accomplish, highlighting the differences and even giving you the option to update the data on one of the systems.
  • Data comparison
  • Data update
  • Speed of execution. It can be slow to run, especially on large datasets.
Full disclosure, I'm a huge fan of Redgate and their SQL products and have been for years. Redgate SQL Compare is well suited anytime you have sets of data you want to compare or update. If you have large tables that you're trying to compare, however, it may take a very long time to compare. It also can take a little time to figure out the user interface — both in setting up the comparison and analyzing the results.
Richard Davies | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My small web development team uses Redgate SQL Compare to help us manage our SQL databases across different environments (development, QA, and production, etc.). It eliminates the tedious and manual task of comparing database schemas and synchronizing them and their data across these different environments.
  • Simple and easy comparison of database schemas and data. Differences can be copied or synced from one database to another with a click of a button.
  • You can save "projects" so that you can easily rerun a previous comparison whenever you need to.
  • It has a very simple, easy to learn interface. I've never needed to read any documentation or watch any tutorials in order to figure out how to do something.
  • I honestly can't think of anything I don't like or anything I would change.
If you maintain different copies of the same database (whether on the same server or on different servers) this is a must have tool. For example, in web development, it's common to have a development database, a testing/QA database, and a production database. This tool makes it easy to compare those different databases for any differences and synchronize changes and data between them. Now, when you deploy a new set of features to production, you can use this to deploy any accompanying database changes. However, if your application includes code that manages the database (for example, a new module or feature might include code to apply related database schema changes when it's installed), then this tool might not be necessary.
Aaron Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Redgate's SQL Compare to create our upgrade scripts for our application upgrades and deployments. We honestly couldn't do our upgrades without it! We make changes constantly to our database schema for our applications and managing those changes can be a hassle, let alone keeping track of what we need to put in the upgrade or new deployment scripts. Redgate's tools make this painless and worry free! Just check in your database changes into SQL and SQL Compare does the rest!
  • Extremely fast!
  • Compares from source control, not just physical databases. No need to keep copies of databases of varying versions laying around.
  • Command line tools integrate easily into automated build processes.
  • Even has plugins for products like Octopus Deploy!
  • Not the best at initial setups. Sometimes there are error messages that have no bearing on what the problem really is.
  • Documentation sometimes can be lacking, but their support team will make up for that.
If you have to keep track of database changes that then need to be sent out to production databases, this is the tool for you! Never again will you need to write complicated scripts and try to catch all the changes that were made in the database between versions. It will even handle data if you need it to!
February 02, 2018

A must have for DBAs

Luca Campanelli | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For my experience, SQL Compare is a DBA's "must have" software. Thanks to SQL Compare you can quickly and easily compare different databases in different environments. Personally, I use it above all to make comparisons between development or testing environments with for example production environments.
  • Comparison speed
  • Immediacy in the highlighting of differences
  • Easy to use
  • Some features or default preferences are not activated and are a bit hidden between the Options flags
  • License fee slightly high
  • If you upgrade the SQL server, you need to upgrade the version of SQL
I use the software routinely, day after day, and I've been using it for 7 years, so I can 100% recommend this software because it never gave me a problem, it's always fast and responsive and it's simple. The classic case where a software in its simplicity does exactly what it should in the best way. The best use case is the comparison of environments before or after deployments.
Michael Jipping | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Redgate is used by the entire organization to Backup and Recover Microsoft SQL Servers hosted on HyperV and Physical Hosts.

It solved our business need for solid SQL Server Backups, Retention Policies, and De-duplication via Advanced Compression. It also provided a great Centralized Management of the SQL Server Environment. I would highly recommend it.
  • It provided a Great Centralized Management Console. User can go to the Console to manage all of their Redgate Licenses and also configure SQL Server Backups.
  • It does an excellent job at managing the SQL Backup and Compressing the backup file to allow for easy transport to DR Locations.
  • It has great options for SQL Server Backup Jobs including copying to secondary storage locations.
  • Better License Management would be an improvement. Currently no way to manage your licenses without contacting your representative.
  • Possibly better testing of backups would an improvement. Ability to restore files in a Sandbox would be a great feature.
Redgate SQL Backup is well suited for use in large and small organizations. It is scalable to needs of a large organization as they expand their footprint. Some of their other products such as the SQL Toolbelt and the Redgate SQL Monitor are also extremely beneficial. Organizations with low bandwidth between interconnects will benefit from the compression feature.
Rob Cowart | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use RedGate SQL Compare within my department. In database development, it's an awesome tool to keep database structures and code in sync, especially with there are many hands working on a database. It helps in determining the REAL scope of structure and code migrations. I use it to both generate deployment scripts for later use and documentation and also to effect some migrations immediately. It depends on if I am trying to sync multiple dev dbs or a dev to qc db or from a dev/qc db to a prod db. It is very thorough in its comparisIt's. Its not unusual that I have a few of those "oh I forgot about that change" moments when running it. It saves me lots of time and frustration in performing db change migrations right the first time. I don't ever want to be without it!!
  • Deep, thorough SQL Server db comparisons in places you might not think to look.
  • Gives me flexibility on how I want to save or execute the SQL Compare results.
  • Remembers settings between uses that speed me in using it.
  • Has a clear and effective interface.
  • Pricing.... I wish there was an inexpensive developer version I could buy for myself.
  • Portability.... I would like to use it from a flash drive so I can use it where ever I am asked to work.
  • Unbundled.... This may be available already but I dont' recall I can buy it cheaply as a stand-alone product. Its only part of the bundle - cost effectively.
  • SQL Compare is great for all database development environments, especially in "wild west," fast paced environments.
  • Great for SCRUM and Agile.
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