Comparing table structures - Question...

Using Informix Dynamic Server 7.3 on Solaris I have an installation procedure for my software which at the moment isnt very intelligent. Each patch has to contain any alterations to the table structures needed. Then every few mths I have to ammalgamate all of those alter scripts into one for simplicity. What I want to have as part of my install, is a way of comparing the structure of each table on the customers database with the latest structure in the install, and if necessary alter the table structure on the fly. I figure this is possible and somebody has probably done it before. Presumably one way would be to run dbschema -d databasename -t tabname , parse the table structure, compare it with my uptodate table structure, and alter it if necessary. However, this sounds like a very complex and troublesome task. Are there any other neater solutions ? TIA, Al.

"Stephens, Alan" wrote: > > Using Informix Dynamic Server 7.3 on Solaris > > I have an installation procedure for my software which at the moment > isnt > very intelligent. Each patch has to contain any alterations to the table > structures needed. Then every few mths I have to ammalgamate all > of those alter scripts into one for simplicity. > > What I want to have as part of my install, is a way of comparing the > structure of each table on the customers database with the latest > structure in the install, and if necessary alter the table structure on > the fly. > > I figure this is possible and somebody has probably done it before. > Presumably one way would be to run dbschema -d databasename -t tabname > , parse the table structure, compare it with my uptodate table > structure, and alter > it if necessary. However, this sounds like a very complex and > troublesome task. > > Are there any other neater solutions ? > > TIA, > Al. Something which works very well for us is to create a table, in which You store a version number for all Your other tables. When doing an alter, we first check the stored version number an then decide which alters have to be done. Wolfgang

Check out www.iiug.org - there's a couple there - schemadiff??? "Stephens, Alan" wrote: > > Using Informix Dynamic Server 7.3 on Solaris > > I have an installation procedure for my software which at the moment > isnt > very intelligent. Each patch has to contain any alterations to the table > structures needed. Then every few mths I have to ammalgamate all > of those alter scripts into one for simplicity. > > What I want to have as part of my install, is a way of comparing the > structure of each table on the customers database with the latest > structure in the install, and if necessary alter the table structure on > the fly. > > I figure this is possible and somebody has probably done it before. > Presumably one way would be to run dbschema -d databasename -t tabname > , parse the table structure, compare it with my uptodate table > structure, and alter > it if necessary. However, this sounds like a very complex and > troublesome task. > > Are there any other neater solutions ? > > TIA, > Al. -- Paul Watson # WF Software Ltd # You are only young once Tel: +44 1436 674729 # but you can be immature Fax: +44 1436 678693 # for ever www.wfsoftware.com #

In article <39215333.1281964E@wfsoftware.com>, Paul Watson <paulw@wfsoftware.com> writes >Check out www.iiug.org - there's a couple there - schemadiff??? > http://www.iiug.org/software/index_all.html then look for dbdiff2 UPDATED! Contains a new version create by ME! -- David Williams