dbdiff vs pgquarrel

DBDiff is a free, MIT-licensed tool for comparing local or remote MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite databases and generating migrations from schema or data differences. It can produce SQL migrations with up and down changes, using native SQL, Flyway, Liquibase, Laravel, or custom templates. The migration runner can create, apply, roll back, check, validate, repair, and baseline migrations. Listed comparison targets include tables, views, triggers, routines, types, sequences, row-level security policies, and data. Its configuration file can specify connections, drivers, diff scope, included or ignored tables and fields, and row filters. Installation options include pre-built Windows, macOS, and Linux binaries, npm, PHAR, Docker or Podman images, and Composer source. For PostgreSQL, DBDiff also compares row-level security policies and table security flags. By default, generation stops when a migration would drop a table or column, though an option permits those changes. One documented PostgreSQL limitation is that removing or reordering enum labels may leave dependent objects that prevent an automatically generated migration from applying.

pgquarrel compares PostgreSQL database schemas and produces SQL commands to bring a target schema in line with a source. It connects to PostgreSQL servers and reads catalog metadata directly, rather than depending on tools such as pg_dump. The project describes deploying schema changes to testing, staging, or production as its main use. Filters can narrow comparisons to selected object types or include and exclude schemas by pattern. Output goes to stdout by default, with options to save it to a file, print a summary, or place changes in one transaction. pgquarrel does not manipulate table data with INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or COPY. Its documented object coverage includes both complete and partial support; inheritance and roles are noted absences, and not all PostgreSQL objects are supported. Output may not work as expected when the source PostgreSQL version is newer than the target. The software is free under the BSD-3-Clause license, distributed as source through GitHub or a Git clone, and the listed latest release is 0.7.0.