Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs. Sequel Pro

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

• Super easy for quick development and investigation
• The interface of exporting tables to SQL can be made better, it's not easy to manually check
• Not suitable for designing your DB
• Connections over SSH to vagrant and Docker hosted DBs
• Auto suggestion can be better

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

• Editing existing data. Editing record contents is trivial in Sequel Pro, while not nearly as easy in MySQL Workbench or phpMyAdmin.
• Deleting data - even simpler than editing data.
• Inserting new data - using "Duplicate row" then making needed changes is very simple.

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

• Improving the way we create new connections to remote databases
• I couldn't find any way to configure my local server (MySQL), so I need to make changes on server outside the application. I know that there are other tools that integrate it, so you don’t have to leave the workflow
• It could have a feature to integrate our databases or connections (favorites) with other devices, like using Google Drive or Dropbox. It would be really useful!

Incentivized

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

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

It's open-source and very convenient to work with. I can easily import any database I want using a data dump and runt the queries on them to derive the data insights on the data. I might want to use Excel to visualize that, that might be one of the disadvantages.

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

MySQL workbench is good to work with MySQL databases, but Sequel Pro gives us the ability to work with any SQL databases. It's open-source, lightweight and solves the problem that I am required to solve to run the DDL and DML queries.

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

• Unreliability has lead to wasted time and frustration among staff.
• The ease of testing database changes and modifying test data WHEN IT WORKS theoretically makes testing quick and easy but in reality, this is far outweighed by the wasted time and frustration involved with it not being reliable.
• The ease of seeing the relations between tables is very nice and saves time when trying to see how unfamiliar tables are connected.

Incentivized