Running a comparison
- On the Compare tab, tick the servers you want to compare in the server tree.
- Choose which comparisons to run: All comparisons, or Selected comparisons from the checklist. A category dropdown filters the checklist by comparison category.
- Select Compare, Snapshot or Load:
- Compare queries every ticked server now and shows the differences.
- Snapshot queries every ticked server now and saves the result to a file, without showing results. See Snapshots.
- Load opens a saved snapshot file, either to view it or to re-run it live against the servers you have ticked.
You can also right-click two or more ticked servers and choose Compare all or Compare selected.
On the Free tier a comparison is limited to two servers. A paid licence removes the limit.
Reading the results
Each ticked server appears as its own column. A Compare against dropdown above the results picks which column is the baseline the other servers are measured against; if you have snapshots loaded it can also use the earliest or latest snapshot as the baseline. There is no fixed pairing chosen up front, so you can change the baseline after the results appear.
A row filter narrows what is shown: Differences only, All rows, or All (including hidden). Differences are colour-coded: red for a difference, orange for a warning, grey for not applicable, and a lighter shade for a row you have suppressed.
Results can be exported to CSV or JSON from the toolbar. Both need a paid licence.
Excluding values that are meant to differ
Some values are expected to differ between servers, such as core count, edition or service pack, and you do not want them reported as differences.
Every column in a comparison carries a rule: Primary key, Ignore, Normal compare, No compare, Unique, and several comparison rules for numeric or matching values (percentage compare, equals, greater than, less than, between, not equals, not between, equals column, within % of column). Set a column to Ignore to drop it from the results entirely, or to No compare to keep it visible without treating it as a difference. Some rules let you record a free-text reason. Column rules are saved with the comparison, so they apply on every run.
You can also suppress individual results after a run: right-click a row and choose Suppress warnings or Hide selected rows. This is stored against the comparison, the object, sub-object and property, optionally for a single server, and is reapplied automatically on every later run.