you could just get md5s before and after. I do something similar with two databases that are supposed to be the same. Unfortunately one is informix and one is sql server

so I bind the columns to hashes, and feed the hashref and the db connection off to a sub which gives me hashes sums

...snip lots of other code...

use strict;     # the obligitory
use warnings;   # use strict and warnings
use Digest::MD5;

my $makedigest = \&digestit;
my %ldb = $makedigest->(\%lemployee, $lsth);
my %rdb = $makedigest->(\%remployee, $rsth);
[download]

...snip lots of other code...

sub digestit
{
    my $dbhash    = shift;
    my $sth       = shift;
    my %newdbhash = ();

    while ( $sth->fetchrow_arrayref )
    {
        my $keydata = Digest::MD5->new;
        for my $key ( keys %{$dbhash} )
        {
            %{$dbhash}->{$key} = ''
                unless ( defined(%{$dbhash}->{$key}) );
        }

        $keydata->add(%{$dbhash}->{$_}) for @key;

        my $digest = $keydata->hexdigest;

        $newdbhash{$digest} = {%{$dbhash}};
    }
    return %newdbhash;
}
[download]

My main reason for doing it this way is that I have NO unique key, so I rely on several columns together to provide me with a unique key. Because the above code is incomplete its probably useless, but the concept is there. Once you have your two hashes ( before and after ) compare the sums.