How to find the structural difference between two tables

Question

Hi all,
How to find the structural difference between two tables .
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production
PL/SQL Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production
CORE 11.1.0.7.0 Production
TNS for 32-bit Windows: Version 11.1.0.7.0 - Production
NLSRTL Version 11.1.0.7.0 - Production
Thanks,
P Prakash

Answer 1

you could try something similar to this, for each table pair that you want to compare:
SELECT 'TABLE_A has these columns that are not in TABLE_B', DIFF.*
  FROM (
        SELECT  COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE, DATA_LENGTH
          FROM all_tab_columns
         WHERE table_name = 'TABLE_A'
         MINUS
        SELECT COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE, DATA_LENGTH
          FROM all_tab_columns
         WHERE table_name = 'TABLE_B'
      ) DIFF
UNION
SELECT 'TABLE_B has these columns that are not in TABLE_A', DIFF.*
  FROM (
        SELECT COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE, DATA_LENGTH
          FROM all_tab_columns
         WHERE table_name = 'TABLE_B'
         MINUS
        SELECT COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE, DATA_LENGTH
          FROM all_tab_columns
         WHERE table_name = 'TABLE_A'
      ) DIFF;that's assuming, column_name, data_type and data_length are all you want to compare on.