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Please note : This help page is not for the latest version of Enterprise Architect. The latest help can be found here.

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Compare Projects

Compares a Source and Target Repository for Differences

The Compare Project facility provides a summary of the changes to a repository by providing a comparison of the number of rows in each system table in the source and the target repositories. The modeling information contained in an Enterprise Architect repository is stored in a set of tables in a relational database. These are system tables that allow you to compare the number of rows in each of the tables, which will provide valuable insights into the differences between two repositories. The tables (with rare exceptions) have intuitive names as indicated by these examples:

  • t_attribute - stores element attributes
  • t_diagram - stores diagrams
  • t_object - stores elements
  • t_package - stores Packages (folders)

Apart from the deliberate changes that you and other modelers make when working on your repository, a number of operations can also make changes to your project that you either want to monitor carefully or that you do not want to retain. Such events include:

  • Recovering from a database problem
  • Restoring a backup
  • Performing a Project Data Transfer
  • Importing from XMI, and
  • Deleting model elements

You might have made a copy of the original project, or the purpose of the operation is to generate a copy, in which case you can compare the size and row counts of the 'before' and 'after' copies as a convenient 'sanity check' that the two repositories are equivalent. The repositories can be on different platforms and the comparison can be made between files and server based repositories as described here:.

  • Compare a project file to another project file (e.g. a *.qeax file and a *.feap)
  • Compare a project file to a DBMS-based repository (e.g. a *.qeax file and an Oracle db)
  • Compare two DBMS repositories  (e.g. a MySQL db and an Oracle db)

The comparison examines the number of rows in each database table, producing a report indicating the total records in each and the difference in record count between the two. If discrepancies are found, you would need to investigate further manually. The comparison does not examine the actual data in the tables but rather provides the summary in the form of table row counts

Access

Ribbon

Settings > Model > Integrity > Project Compare

Compare two projects

Step

Action

See also

1

On the 'Project Compare' dialog, select the radio button for the database types of the two projects you want to compare:

  • File to File
  • DBMS to File
  • File to DBMS
  • DBMS to DBMS

2

In the 'Source Project' and 'Target Project' fields, select the connection strings for the source and target projects.

3

Click on the Compare Projects button.

The results of the comparison display in the panel at the bottom of the dialog.

4

If you want to print the results of the comparison, click on the Print List button.
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