[IGN-4488]Is tags compare between 2 versions of the project impossible?

[PGriffith]

@hewking32

Is there any other way to compare the tags to find what is missing in the master project?

Use a tool that understands the semantics of JSON, e.g. http://www.jsondiff.com/
JSON is a human-readable format, but is not plain text.

@hewking32

is using json file for exports not limiting ignition scada a lot as we cannot use excel for heavy duty manipulation of the tags?

On the contrary,

1. Exporting to Excel would be dramatically limiting. Excel's strict row/column model, by definition, cannot fit nested data. If each row is a tag, where do you put properties that can have multiple values, such as alarms?
2. Modern Excel versions can directly read JSON files, although you'll still ultimately have the same problem of shoving multi-dimensional nested data into a strict R/C format: Power Query JSON connector - Power Query | Microsoft Learn

Using a simple, but structured format, allows for a huge variety of tooling; JSON is a 'de-facto' standard for interchange between APIs and has an ecosystem to match. For instance, there's an incredibly powerful tool call jq that can make very complex operations absolutely trivial; see this post for an example:

How to create / append bulk tooltips via script with json export?

You can do it with jq (a downloadable command-line executable designed to manipulate JSON): walk( if type == "object" and .valueSource == "opc" then .tooltip = "TagName: \(.name) \(.opcItemPath)" else . end) https://jqplay.org/s/Pe6T7qNEFY I mostly copied this snippet from here: