I bet most of you use some type of diff/comparison tool at work. Probably one for the file system and another for SQL objects. I won’t call any out, but it’s a fairly competitive market and all do at least a passable job of doing the compare. I was doing a compare a few months ago and it just seemed like it was taking longer than it should. Started to look at a different product, but thought – hey, I need a new project, why not this one?

Started off looking at it from a data perspective, thinking that most developers will be code centric and probably won’t let SQL do what SQL does well. Thought on it some…where can I find the extra performance I need for really big databases? Maybe go direct to the drive, bypass the OS?

What brought it together was some reading I was doing about space and physics, a recommendation on my book list. Quantum physics is hard. But, it also postulates some really interesting behaviors that have been worked into computing already. Why not look at that?

Turns out no one had thought to apply it to what is a fairly simple problem. QC (“quac”) will compare any two databases or file systems in less than .01 seconds and visually show you the difference in a UI much like other (less fast) products on the market. We’ve tested against multi TB systems, systems with 100K plus objects, the compare is not quite instantaneous, but it will seem pretty close.

It’s still in beta, but you can give it a try now (www.quantumcompare.com), and I think you’ll find that from now on you’ll smile every time you do a compare. Feedback always appreciated!