Comparing SSIS package code...any suggestions?

Question

I've hit the inevitable state where I have to do a diff on the code within two versions of a SSIS package.

What have you used successfully other than what I'm going to do now by opening up 2 instances of VS and go over it box by box and variable by variable?

Note: The things that are important to compare in my case are:

1. Variables
2. Code in Execute SQL Tasks
3. Order of Tasks
4. Data Flows
5. Order of data flow components

Answer 1

Try BIDS Helper. It prepares both versions by normalizing whitespace and splitting long lines before making the comparison. Most changes can be easily recognized.

Answer 2

There are some utilities that will do this:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.sqlserver.dts&tid=0619e97f-4dd4-4946-bd41-888e751a5d72&cat=en_US_2b8e81a3-be64-42fa-bd81-c6d41de5a219&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=&p=1

http://www.apexsql.com/sql_tools_ssis_compare.asp

Randy

Answer 3

I use Notepad++ to compare dtsx (xml) files. Some times even write some code to extract components for example to extract all SQL stored in a large SSIS package with dozens of ExecuteSQL tasks.