Best way to compare two ENTIRE rows in seperate tables?

Hi folks, I've got a fairly easy one here me thinx. I'm looking for the best way to compare two entire rows from two seperate tables which have the same primary key.

Here's the basic lowdown:

I get some data every night from an external system (cache') via DTS. This is more or less my "master" data which drives my application. I have just been informed of an interesting constraint. If any of the data changes in the external system, those changes do not become effective until the first day of the ensuing fiscal quarter.

I'm solving this by running the DTS as normal, but populating a "duplicate" table which I will evaluate once per quarter for any changes. This is also the preferred solution because they would like to see a snapshot between current cache' data and the data my application is currently working with.

So, I end up with two identically structured tables. both tables have the same primary key and can be linked by an id field with relative ease. What I would like to do is a full row comparision once this join is established.

Right now I explicitly check the value of each column. ie:

WHERE t1.field1 <> t2.field1 OR t1.field2 <> t2.field2 OR t1.field3 <> t2.field3 ... etc

I'm hoping there is something buried in TSQL that I just don't know about that can handle comparing entire rows and tell me if they're different. Or perhaps there's another approach all-together.

Any thoughts?in my opinion, a JOIN with a column-by-column comparison is the best way to go

WHERE t1.field1 <> t2.field1 OR t1.field2 <> t2.field2 OR t1.field3 <> t2.field3

another approach:select pkey
from (
select * from table1
union
select * from table2
) u
group
by pkey
having count(*) = 2 since UNION removes duplicate rows, this query will give you all the pkeys which have something different

of course, then you gotta dive back into the tables to see the actual data, so ...|||I'm hoping there is something buried in TSQL that I just don't know about that can handle comparing entire rows and tell me if they're different. Or perhaps there's another approach all-together.There is.select a.pkey
from (select pkey, binary_checksum(*) as checkvalue from a) checksumsa
inner join (select pkey, binary_checksum(*) as checkvalue from b) as checksumb
on checksumsa.pkey = checksumsb.pkey
where checksumsa.checkvalue <> checksumsb.checkvalueBUT...binary_checksum values are not guaranteed to be different 100% of the time. There is a slight chance that the data could be modified in a way that leaves the checksum value unchanged, though the chances are slim.
Have you considered placing a trigger on your secondary table to set a flag when a record is updated? In the end, that may be your best approach.|||Sounds like Delta processing

http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/brettk/archive/2004/04/23/1281.aspx|||When using binary checksums (which is the way I do this comparison across several databases and tables we have) you also have to be aware that there can be differences reported if one of the servers being used in the comparison is a LINKED server...
http://www.dbforums.com/showthread.php?t=1213716|||Good stuff guys! I'll be leveraging a bit of what Rudy and Brett posted for what I need. I was positive there had to be a more elegant method than what I was doing...

Thanks duders!