Understanding the Compare Process

PeopleSoft Application Designer enables you to compare the contents of the database to which you are signed on (or project within) with the target database or an exported project file. It enables you to view the status of each definition in each location so you can then decide which definitions to keep.

There are two ways to compare definitions:

• Compare all database definitions of a certain type, such as record definitions. After doing so, you populate the upgrade project with only the definitions that are defined differently in the source than in the target.

• Compare only the definitions in the current upgrade project to the equivalent definitions in the target database or file.

When performing comparisons between source and target definitions, PeopleSoft Application Designer enables you to:

• Generate workspace reports.

  These reports appear in the PeopleSoft Application Designer workspace immediately after the compare process completes.

• Generate browser reports.

  These reports are written to HTML and XML files enabling you to open the report in a browser, share the report with coworkers easily, and store report data in an industry-standard format.

• Generate Output to Tables.

  Writes the compare reports to output tables.

• Generate PrintProject compare report

  This report is written to the report directory in HTML using RTF format.

• Visually compare page definitions.

  This feature enables you to view the source and target page definitions side-by-side with differences clearly marked.

• Visually compare and merge text definitions.

  This feature enables you to view the source and target PeopleCode, HTML, SQL, XSLT definitions side-by-side with differences clearly marked. It also enables you to merge source PeopleCode with target PeopleCode.