custom built database comparison tool...how to integrate with BC3?

[kjullion]

Hi,
We have a custom built tool to compare diffs between two Jet databases (let's call it JetCompare.exe). We typically start of our versions differences comparison by looking at all file diffs between two version folders, and often there are database diffs included within the compare results.

What we would like to do is have the user be able to highlight the two MDB files in BC (we are on version 3) and then right-click and "send" those two fully-qualified file names to our custom DB compare tool.

So we would like the command line to be generated by BC to read something like this:

JetCompare.exe "C:\Versions\010000\db1.mdb" "C:\Versions\010001\db1.mdb"

And the paths to each of those two parameters are obviously well-known by the BC interface.

Can this be done? We wouldn't be averse to using the right-click > Explorer > Send To method since we can customize the SendTo options to include our JetCompare.exe, if that would help accomplish this goal.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Zoë]

Hi Kevin,

You can use the "Open With" comnmand for that. Go to Tools->Options, then select "Open With" on the treeview on the left of the dialog. You can put anything you'd like in for the Description and Shortcut. Command line would be

JetCompare.exe "%f1" "%f2"

Accepts files should be checked, Refresh when finished should be checked if you want BC to wait for the tool to exit if you allow editing. When you use it you'll need to select both files.

Beyond Compare 4 has this better integrated in that you can actually set up a new session type that launches an external tool whenever it needs to perform a comparison, so just double clicking on a file or even running a rules-based comparison will call it with appropriate command line parameters for a visual or non-interactive compare. V4's support also handles files on FTP sites, in zips, etc; the Open With support only works with files on local or network drives.

[kjullion]

Hi Kevin,
...
This won't work with

Thanks, seems to have worked perfectly. This is great. I don't know how significant this is but your post had an incomplete sentence, so I'm curious to know what it "won't work with"...

[Zoë]

It wasn't significant. I was going to talk about the FTP/zip issue, but just addressed it later.