The UNION ALL and EXCEPT method will work and is easier to understand, but it is too time consuming for me. If you use 'select *' with the EXCEPT, you will get the different records, but have no idea what columns changed. However, you could loop through the syscolumns table and create dynamic sql to use this method for each column. Like I said, this is easier to understand and certainly easier and quicker to code. Using this method requires reading the tables once for every column in the table. My method checks everything in one single pass. With some tables with hundreds of columns, I prefer my method (but am always looking for a quicker and easier method).