Patent ID: 7680833

Claim:
A method executable by a processor, comprising: retrieving, by a database structure comparison computer, a first database from a first database computer; retrieving, by the database structure comparison computer, a second database from a second database computer; providing, by the database structure comparison computer, a first tree structure representative of the structure of the first database and a second tree structure representative of the structure of the second database, wherein the tree structures include nodes representative of database objects in the respective databases; generating, by the database structure comparison computer, an individual cyclic redundancy check (CRC) value and a cumulative CRC value for each node in the first tree structure and each node in the second tree structure; comparing, from top to bottom, by the database structure comparison computer, the individual CRC value and the cumulative CRC value associated with a parent node in the first tree structure with the individual CRC value and the cumulative CRC value associated with a corresponding parent node in the second tree structure wherein comparing the individual CRC values and the cumulative CRC values comprises: beginning with a parent node in each tree structure, comparing the individual CRC values of the parent node and, if the individual CRC values do not match, comparing the characteristics of the parent node and comparing the cumulative CRC values and, if the cumulative CRC values match, not comparing the cumulative or individual CRC values of the parent nodes' sub-nodes, and if the cumulative CRC values do not match, comparing the cumulative CRC values of the parent nodes' sub-nodes; identifying, by the database structure comparison computer, differences between the first database and the second database based on the comparison of the individual and cumulative CRC values, wherein if the cumulative CRC value for a parent node in the first tree structure matches the cumulative CRC value for a corresponding parent node in the second tree structure, child nodes of the matching parent nodes are not compared, wherein if the individual CRC value for a parent node in the first tree structure matches the individual CRC value for a parent node in the second tree structure, the cumulative CRC value for that parent node in the first tree structure is not compared with the cumulative CRC value for the parent node in the second tree structure; and sending, to a database administrator computer, information related to the database comparison.