in reply to Comparing databases - what is the best way?

Provided that the tables aren't too big, I'd think about using $dbh->selectall_arrayref("...") to slurp each pair of tables into memory, use Data::Dumper to turn them into strings, and something diff-ish to find differences.

If the tables are too big for that, then you'll need to do a bit more work. For each pair of tables, get a list of the values of the primary key(s), and find any differences - that'll catch added and deleted records. Then you'll also need to compare the individual records for each value of the primary key that is common to both tables