To use SQL Data Compare you need:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 or later, or Windows 7 or later

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 or later

Supported SQL Server versions

• SQL Server 2017
• SQL Server 2016
• SQL Server 2014
• SQL Server 2012
• SQL Server 2008 R2
• SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2005
• Microsoft Azure SQL Database
• SQL Server on Amazon RDS

Support for reading backups

The 'backup' data source type has further limitations:

• Natively compressed / encrypted backups are not supported
• Advanced table features, e.g. file tables, memory-optimized tables, temporal tables are not supported
• Some SQL Server 2012+ only object types, e.g. sequences are not supported