There are three general phases involved in creating and viewing comparisons of encyclopedias, described in detail below. To summarize, you use the System Architect Compare function in System Architect to generate an XML output file for each encyclopedia to be compared, then use System Architect Compare to specify compare and display choices and run the comparison, and finally view the comparison output which is provided in the form of a website.

When you select to compare a SQL Server 2005 encyclopedia that has not been converted to use the Optimized XT Reader, a dialog informs you that the encyclopedia needs to be converted. If you do not convert it, you cannot run a compare against it. You need to open the encyclopedia with System Architect to convert it. Alternatively, you can use System Architect Encyclopedia Manager (SAEM) to enable Optimized XT Reader. See the SAEM for SQL Server online help for more information.