Visual Compare lets COOL:Gen users track and manage objects and models in transition. Visual Compare helps you compare object models and analyze changes, enabling you to reduce the scope of your migrations and to migrate with more confidence.

Know the Impact of Changes Before They Go Into Production
The standard version control tools provided by COOL:Gen identify changes based on time stamps, but do not provide specific details on the content or scope of changes. Visual Compare provides model managers with reports that detail actual value changes to your models.

These reports let the COOL:Gen project manager evaluate the impact of proposed changes before they are migrated into production. The larger the project and the more widely the information is shared, the more critical this task becomes, and the more you need tools to automate comparison and tracking of change.

Visual Compare can present changes either as diagrams highlighting differences in color or as printed reports with changes indicated in the margin. Identification and validation of changes only takes seconds with these easy to use presentation formats.

Improve Your Control Over Model Management
Tracking changes is a critical aspect of managing application definitions. Just as the traditional developer uses utilities to compare work-in-progress source code or other components prior to committing changes, the COOL:Gen developer must compare development models before migrating them. Visual Compare supports your development efforts by assisting with:

• Change/Version Control. The project administrator can use detailed information on changes, deletions, and renames to identify and eliminate inappropriate changes before migration.

• Impact Analysis. On most projects, it's easy to lose track of all the changes made to a model. Visual Compare quickly highlights the changes so that team members can stay abreast of object modifications and can better assess the impact of changes on their own as well as other application areas.

• System Synchronization. By automating the change identification process, migration times are reduced and post-migration problems are avoided. Migration to new versions of production software can be better coordinated and synchronized.

• General Compare. Visual Compare is also helpful to analysts inheriting an application who want to do a quick analysis of what's contained in the library of models.