IDERA Snapshot Utility is a tool that allows you to create database snapshots via the command line. A snapshot is a file that contains all the schema information for a database. The schema information is stored in a proprietary format and can only be read by the IDERA SQL Schema Compare user interface or command line. The schema snapshot does not contain data, only schema information.

The Snapshot Utility accepts parameters in the format /name:value. There are no spaces between the name and the value and the value is separated from the name with a colon <:>. If the value itself contains spaces, it should be surrounded in double quotes.

IDERA Snapshot Utility supports the following arguments:

• /s:<server> Specifies the SQL Server instance.
• /d:<database> Specifies the database name.
• /t: Indicates that the connection to the database should be a trusted connection. If not specified, the connection by default is trusted.
• /u:<username> Specifies the username when the database uses the SQL Server authentication.
• /p:<password> Specifies the password when the database uses the SQL Server authentication.
• /sp:<filename> Saves the snapshot to the specified filename. If the filename is not set, the snapshot file will be named as database.snpx.
• /cs:<connection_string> Specifies the connection string to the database. Use this option when you need to set additional settings that are not supported directly such as the connection timeout.
• /f:<setting_file> Creates the snapshot using the settings in the specified file. When the /f parameter is specified, all other parameters are ignored. In addition of being easier to manage, using a setting file allows you also to create snapshots for multiple databases. In this case use one line per database.

Samples:

The following command creates a snapshot for the database AdventureWorks on the local SQL Server using a trusted connection:

xSQLSnapshot /s:(local) /d:AdventureWorks /sp:"c:\AdventureWorks.snpx"

The following command creates the snapshot by specifying a connection string:

xSQLSnapshot /cs:"Persist Security Info=False;User ID=<username>;Password=<password>;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;Data Source=(local)" /sp:"c:\AdventureWorks.snpx"

The following command uses the setting file snapshot.txt to create the snapshot for two databases:

xSQLSnapshot /f:"c:\snapshot.txt"

The setting file snapshot.txt contains the following lines:

/s:(local) /d:AdventureWorks_DEV /sp:"c:\AdventureWorks_DEV.snpx"
/s:(local) /d:AdventureWorks_PROD /sp:"c:\AdventureWorks_PROD.snpx"