Special cases in schema synchronization

This page describes special cases that explain how schema synchronization scripts behave.

Column order

The Column order option is enabled by default. When this option is selected, adding a column to a table triggers a table rebuild to preserve the original column order during schema deployment.

To ignore differences in column order, clear this option when configuring a New Schema Comparison project.

Database diagrams

dbForge Studio doesn’t allow comparing or synchronizing database diagrams.

System objects

dbForge Studio doesn’t allow comparing or synchronizing system objects, except for users, roles, and system schemas.

Users

With dbForge Studio, you can compare and deploy user-related changes, such as permission updates. However, modifications to user passwords cannot be compared or synchronized.

Filegroups

dbForge Studio doesn’t synchronize filegroups, partition schemes, or partition functions. However, it does synchronize the related properties of tables, indexes, primary keys, and unique constraints.

Encrypted database objects

You can decrypt encrypted database objects by enabling the Decrypt encrypted objects option.

When the Decrypt encrypted objects option is selected, dbForge Studio decrypts the bodies of encrypted objects to make them available for comparison and synchronization. Keep in mind that if the databases contain a large number of encrypted objects, enabling this option may slightly reduce comparison performance.

To deactivate this option, navigate to the Options page of the New Schema Comparison wizard and clear the Decrypt encrypted objects checkbox.

CLR datatypes

To ignore CLR datatypes during comparison and deployment, navigate to the Options page of the New Schema Comparison wizard and select the Ignore CLR datatypes checkbox. When this option is enabled, CLR data types of columns in the target tables will be preserved whenever possible.

Database extended properties

Differences in database extended properties are hidden in comparison results but can still be deployed. By default, the Ignore database extended properties option is enabled. Extended properties remain intact after object changes are deployed, even if the referencing database is rebuilt.

To deactivate the option, navigate to the Options page of the New Schema Comparison wizard and clear the Ignore database extended properties checkbox.