1. A computer-implemented method for comparing the metadata of database objects, comprising the steps of: identifying a first database object and a second database object, wherein metadata of the first database object comprises first instance specific metadata and first non-instance specific metadata, and metadata of the second database object comprises second instance specific metadata and second non-instance specific metadata; generating a first document representing the metadata of the first database object, and a second document representing the metadata of the second database object, wherein: the generated documents are written using a markup language, such that the first document represents the first non-instance specific metadata but not the first instance specific metadata, and the second document represents the second non-instance specific metadata but not the second instance specific metadata; and the first and second documents can be described as a tree of nodes comprising a root node and at least one child node; comparing the first and second documents, the comparison comprising: comparing the root nodes of the first and second documents; and comparing child nodes of the first and second documents; identifying differences between the first and second documents based at least in part upon the comparison.