Reformat and compare data

When comparing data across two different data sources it is not uncommon to be overwhelmed with too many differences due simply to different data formatting on the two systems. This is especially likely when comparing two different database types (e.g. SQL Server and DB2) where they may not even support the same data types.

In less than a minute, this screen cast shows you how to:

• Compare data from two queries executed against different databases (in this case MySQL and Firebird)
• Transform their results (which contain differently formatted date columns) to minimise false differences
• Review the data comparison with cross-grid highlighting

Of course, we could have transformed the data in the query itself to ensure a more consistent data set, but this is not always a trivial undertaking.

You may have noticed that in this example we transformed both data sources. This is simply to avoid any issues with the machine's locale which can significantly affect the representation of dates regardless of how they are stored in the original database.

In this example we formated the date with the mask: "{0:dd/MM/yyyy}" which would format 21 Feb 2010 as 21/02/2010. Formatting options are covered in more detail in our data format how to.

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