Feature Compare Tool Upgrade

[PhilPeterschick]

I believe the existing Feature Compare tool works by comparing two feature classes using individual records Object ID's as the linking basis for feature to feature comparison. I have the need and believe others would too, for this to be expanded to allow the user to pick the field used for the linking and then comparison. OID does changes regularly and I believe individual users whom have implemented UID/GUID/ Esris GlobalID would get better results especially in scenarios where large scale data aggregation efforts come together.
 

[ErikSandin]

The feature compare tool (Feature Compare (Data Management) should support inserts and deletes.

Currently the feature compare tool only supports updates.  The tool does not support comparing records below an inserted or deleted feature when comparing based on an id column.
The records in each feature class are sorted on the chosen column and then the comparison goes like this:
1 <-> 1
2 <-> 2
3 <-> 3
Added or deleted records screw up this kind of comparison. For example if record "2" is deleted from the left-hand table, it goes like this:
1 <-> 1
3 <-> 2
null <-> 3
If a record is inserted anywhere but the end of the right-hand table, the comparison goes like this:
1 <-> 1
2 <-> 4
3 <-> 2
null <-> 3

The desired behavior woud be to compare records based on something like a join on the desired id column

[DavidKnudsen]

Yes, the tool is a help as far as it goes because of the ease of configuring it to compare records on some or all of their attributes (including geometry) all at once (laborious to script such comparisons when working through a join), but I am always comparing feature classes that have both added and deleted records. To make the comparison work requires pre-processing the two feature classes--using a join--to remove the features not common to both by ID. I add my vote for extending the flexibility of this tool to make it directly useful in more cases.

[TonyDupont]

I could not agree more. There are plenty of side-effects that caused by limiting it to the OID that make comparisons between datasets a much bigger problem.

[BrittanyBurson]

100%! Thank you for posting. I was surprised to see this was posted 5+ years ago and has not been resolved today.

The Feature Compare and Table Compare tools are not useful for me unless we can compare based on a unique ID, instead of a sorted order. By using a sort order to compare rows, if you have any added or removed features (part of why I was running the tool to find out...) it cannot run:

[MichaelMarlatt1]

I will also chime in to say this tool would be useful if it knew how to compare features that have like values in the sort field.  As it is I don't understand how this tool would ever be useful.

[MargaretCrawford]

We are marking this idea as implemented, based on the availability of the Sort Field parameter on the Feature Compare tool, which allows the user to specify which field should be used to sort the records for comparison. 

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/data-management/feature-compare.htm

Having said that, there are comments which discuss different enhancements, to support comparison when the two feature classes have added or removed records. As those comments do not directly relate to the initial request, they should be added as a second ArcGIS Idea for tracking purposes.