Chrome DevTools vs. Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials

Chrome DevTools helps us identify areas to address such as optimising website performance, cross-browser compatibility, and responsive design. We use the Coverage and panel to identify any unused code, which can cause slow loading times, together with the Network panel which is crucial for analysing page load performance and optimising resources.

Incentivized

We use SQL Compare to troubleshoot performance problems quite a bit since our data model is more like a template and not everything is 100% in sync and customization occurs between different client databases. We continually get pulled into performance issues and the developers will say Client A is performing different than Client B, why? Using SQL Compare, we usually find that one client was tuned and had indexes altered or added that weren't deployed to all clients or other objects weren't deployed correctly during the release. On the other hand, since our data model practices allow client databases to drift I tried to create a new golden image by trying to compare multiple databases based on the same data model and found it to be a very difficult process to complete using SQL Compare. SQL Compare gave me too much information and doesn't allow enough filtering to eliminate a lot of the noise.

Incentivized

• Provides clear, easy to understand, and actionable intelligence on how the browser is retrieving, parsing and rendering the page.
• Covers a wide gamut of front-end development tasks, from manipulating CSS rules to line-by-line debugging of JavaScript to helpful page and server insights.
• Continuously incorporates new tools and helpful features. With nearly every major Chrome release there is a "What's new" update with at least one or two useful items.

Incentivized

• Simple and easy comparison of database schemas and data. Differences can be copied or synced from one database to another with a click of a button.
• You can save "projects" so that you can easily rerun a previous comparison whenever you need to.
• It has a very simple, easy to learn interface. I've never needed to read any documentation or watch any tutorials in order to figure out how to do something.

Incentivized

• It would be nice in the elements panel, if clicking on a node scrolled the screen to that node. On some large pages its easy to get lost in the code and not know where the element you're inspecting resides on the screen.
• It would be nice if, in addition to the console, there was a panel that behaved more like an editor instead of a command prompt. It may seem trivial but it would be very helpful when writing multi-line functions.

Incentivized

• Pricing.... I wish there was an inexpensive developer version I could buy for myself.
• Portability.... I would like to use it from a flash drive so I can use it where ever I am asked to work.
• Unbundled.... This may be available already but I dont' recall I can buy it cheaply as a stand-alone product. Its only part of the bundle - cost effectively.

Incentivized

While Chrome DevTools are very powerful, it's not the easiest thing to use, as there are so many different tools built in. It takes some exploring to discover all the options possible within DevTools, but with a little exploring, the DevTools become a very powerful asset. Accessing the basic HTML and CSS inspection is very easy though, and that's the most common usage for the DevTools.

Incentivized

It's a good tool to have, but becomes expensive to buy a user license for each developer.

Incentivized

I'm not entirely sure what to rate the support for DevTools, because I don't have any experience dealing with official customer support for DevTools. I would guess the primary support for DevTools would be in a Chrome forum. Typically if I have a question or issue, I am able to find an answer from doing a quick Google search. It's pretty widely used, so it's not difficult to find answers.

Incentivized

They have a great community website where you can search for answers but are also very responsive when it comes to direct support.

Incentivized

I find them pretty much the same, they have the same tools except Firefox doesn't provide the lighthouse functionality. I do prefer firefox's dark theme and colour palette. But I use Chrome Dev tools because of the Light house functionality that analyzes the page load and scores the website on desktop and mobile experience.

Incentivized

I've used Visual Studio Database Projects for this type of work in the past with some success, but Redgate SQL Compare is faster, more transparent, and simply easier to use. Faster is self explanatory. More transparent, means that it's much easier to set up your desired options for schema change deployment scripts. Easier to use, It's really dead simple. Start a project, connect your source, connect destination, click compare.

Incentivized

• All positive, the tool is free so there's no need to spend money on it. Every return is positive.
• A lot, their tools increases productivity due because it helps developers to create and test websites inside the browser.
• Tools are intuitive so there's no need to invest in education on developers to learn these tools.

Incentivized

• Makes deployment fairly simple. Cutting our deployment time down.
• With the SDK, we can customize our deployment process very quickly and easily.
• History is not great, it does create scripts you can go back and see but it would be nice to have a quicker version view by object to save time.

Incentivized