Re: Keeping creation time of objects

Andrew Dunstan wrote:
<...>
>
> Can someone please give a good, concrete use case for this stuff? "Might
> be nice to have" doesn't cut it, I'm afraid. In particular, I'd like to
> know why logging statements won't do the trick here.
>

Please pardon the kibbitzer intrusion ...

Informix has this feature and I've often yearned for it in PostgreSQL (although it is low on my personal priorities). Typical use case I've run into is working on legacy databases where the original DBA is gone or senile (deprecating self-reference not to applied to any one on this list) and I need to make sense of a muddle of similarly named tables or functions with the same structure but different row counts or variant codings. The logs have long since been offlined to gosh knows where or lost -- we're talking 5 or more years of activity -- and even scripts may be suspect (the checked in script might refer to an original table but the DBA made on the fly changes) or some other DBA-like creature did things without proper procedures being followed.

Having that date has been critical to resolving those issues of which table came in which order. It also gives a time window to use to go check old emails, archives, etc. for more information.

Last update of data seems prohibitively expensive; if a user wants that a trigger and a 2nd table could well do that. Last DDL mod ... I could see the use but my old workhorse doesn't offer it so it never occurred to me to want it. Until know. '-)

But this request is adding metadata, I agree. But with my vague understandings adding a date or time stamp for table creation wouldn't be a large bloat and if only required at creation seems low overhead.

But maybe only bad DBAs need it. Or good DBAs who inherit systems from bad ones ?

Sorry for the crufty posting -- my web client has recently deteriorated in terms of message formatting.

Greg Williamson
Senior DBA
DigitalGlobe

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