VS SchemaCompare: Making Table Updates

Question

Does anyone know how the SchemaCompare in Visual Studio (using 2010 currently) determines how to handle [SQL Server 2008R2] database table updates (column data type, optionality, etc)?

The options are to:

• Use separate ALTER TABLE statements
• Create a new table, copy the old data into the new table, rename the old table before the new one can be renamed to assume the proper name

I'm asking because we have a situation involving a TIMESTAMP column (for optimistic locking). If SchemaCompare uses the new table approach, the TIMESTAMP column values will change & cause problems for anyone with the old TIMESTAMP values.

Answer 1

I believe Schema Compare employs the same CREATE-COPY-DROP-RENAME (CCDR) strategy as VSTSDB described here: link

Should be able to confirm this by running a compare and scripting out the deploy, no?