Every now and then I come across a program that becomes so ingrained in my daily work that I hardly know how I'd get by without it. I'll probably break down a couple over the next few days, but for database work, I have never found anything as good as Red Gate's SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare . Essentially these tools let you compare two SQL Server databases (all objects, users, permissions, functions, diagrams, anything) and update changes to whichever database you want. This is amazingly useful for deploying database changes to a test or production environment (do it to production with ridiculous care, even though it will generate a SQL Script for you and run all updates in one transaction), and making sure everything is synchronized. For releases we can just generate the compare script, confirm that the changes match the updates we want to go out, and store it all in one place with the release details. This is true for both the structure and the data, to
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I was watching Jay Leno last night, and he was doing JayWalking. He asked what did Santa bring to the birth of Jesus, and the lady started thinking, and said - Well, he flew on his reindeer and brought presen.... Wait, I don't think he was there."
It was funny and sad at the same time.