Response: What’s the diff? Or – how to see exactly what is new with an updated MP

Source: Kevin Holman’s OpsMgr Blog

Kevin blogged about ways to find the differences between different versions of a MP.

After converting the MP’s to XML files he showed you could use XML Notepad or Beyond Compare to show the differences between the two MP’s.

He ends with the question if you have some better/cooler XML diff tools to let him know.

I found another ways of finding the differences but I don’t think these are any better, because they still doe not provide the summary in the context of OpsMgr.

Ok, how could you find the differences between a MP?

First you could PowerShell.

PowerShell has a Cmdlet called Compare-Object. This Cmdlet takes two resultsets and automatically analyzes them. It then outputs only those items present in either one of the result sets.

Steps:

  1. Export the MP’s to XML files
  2. Get the contents of the to XML converted MP files
  3. Run Compare-Object Cmdlet

Complete PowerShell script

$version1 = get-content C:\temp\Compare\version1\System.Mom.BackwardCompatibility.Library.xml
$version2 = get-content C:\Temp\Compare\Version2\System.Mom.BackwardCompatibility.Library.XML
Compare-Object $version1 $version2

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But as said before I don’t think this would really be an improvement above the ways Kevin mentions.

The second method is using Compare Sheets in Excel.

First export the MP’s to Excel with the MPViewer tool from Boris and doing the comparison within Excel. I’ve found some great Excel tools from JMT Excel Consulting which have a Compare Sheets macro you could use to do the comparison.

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Only problem with this Macro is you have to select each Worksheet manually before you can do the comparison.

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So the question still remains do you better ways of finding the differences between MP’s with some OpsMgr context?