Datafold announced that it is no longer supporting the open-source data-diff package as of May 17, 2024, and suggests a free trial of Datafold Cloud for in-database and cross-database diffing. The blog highlights the importance of using data diffs to catch unexpected changes in dbt models that standard dbt tests might miss, such as duplicated strings in a column. It introduces two open-source tools for running data diffs: dbt Labs' audit_helper and Datafold's data-diff. The audit_helper package includes macros like compare_all_columns, which can compare values across all columns of dbt models to identify differences, such as conflicting values, nulls, and missing primary keys between development and production versions of a table. By toggling the 'summarize' flag, users can either get a summary of differences or a detailed breakdown, allowing for deeper analysis and integration with warehouse data for more comprehensive insights.