You can use SQL Data Compare to compare a backup with other data sources. This is useful, for example, when you want to retrieve the data from a backup and compare it with your database without running a restore operation or copying the backup from a remote network.

If you're comparing two backups, you don't need SQL Server to be installed on your computer.

Comparing and deploying backups

You can:

• compare a backup with another data source
  See Setting data sources.
• create a deployment script from a backup

When you've selected a backup as the target, the deployment wizard creates a script to update the database from which the backup was created. Backups can't be modified directly.

When a backup is the source, and a database is the target, the database can be deployed with the backup.

Compatibility with backups

To use a differential backup as a data source, you must also add the associated full backup.

SQL Data Compare supports:

• native SQL Server backups
• SQL Backup backups
  You can use backups created with SQL Backup version 3 or later; you can use compressed or encrypted backups.

When you set up a comparison that uses backup files, SQL Data Compare doesn't support:

• tables that don't have a primary key, unique index, or unique constraint
• views
• computed columns
  However, you can compare persisted computed columns.
• string representations of CLR types
  Only the binary representation is supported.
• custom comparison keys
  However, you can select an alternative unique index, or unique constraint.
• row filtering using the WHERE Clause Editor