I’ve been asking for a way to compare SSIS packages for a long time, and finally Redgate has released an early access version. Years ago we had an internal version, but the visual comparison format was a problem. Really, we couldn’t decide how to actually compare packages on screen in a way that makes sense for users.

Well, this has been a part-time project for a few developers, and they’ve been trying out ideas for years. I saw something last year that looked good, and I’ve been hoping they’d move it forward. It finally got accepted as a Foundry project, which is our research arm.

It got a little polish, and now you can get a view of two packages, with various annotations that tells you something is different between the various tasks. The inspiration is the Execution Plan compare, which is in SSMS now.

If you want to try this out, you can’t. It’s a joke. While I do hope they build this, for now, there’s no project in the works.