An overview of the Data Comparison toolset

The Data Comparison toolset contains tools to compare one dataset with another dataset to report similarities and differences. You can use these tools to identify changes made to a dataset. These tools are most effective in detecting updates made to existing data in the dataset. When detecting added or deleted data, they are only effective in identifying the first instance of an addition or deletion. The tools can report differences with geometry, tabular values, spatial reference, and field definitions.

Tool	Description
Feature Compare	Compares two feature classes or layers and returns the comparison results. Feature Compare can report differences with geometry, tabular values, spatial reference, and field definitions.
File Compare	Compares two files and returns the comparison results. File Compare can report differences between two ASCII files or two binary files.
Raster Compare	Compares the properties of two raster datasets, two raster catalogs, or two mosaic dataset and then returns the comparison result.
Table Compare	Compares two tables or table views and returns the comparison results. This tool can report differences and similarities with tabular values and field definitions.
TIN Compare	Compares two TINs and returns the comparison results. TIN Compare can report differences with geometry, TIN node and triangle tags, and spatial reference.

Tools in the Data Comparison toolset