As the title says...
How do I determine the time an entry was made into a mysql table without adding a new column? I realize that I could add a table.created TIMESTAMP column but I'd rather not do this. I'm using MySQL 5.1
I don't think you can do that. If you could, then timestamp columns would be unnecessary.
Why the reluctance to use a column?
Well, you first need to figure out where you want this data to be stored. mySql doesn't just automatically track when rows are created or updated, so that means it's up to you to store it.
Your first option is to store it in the database. This means altering your table and adding a new column, or storing it elsewhere in the database. If you want to store the information in another table, you have to modify the code that does the insert to also log the data - or use a TRIGGER to automatically log the data.
If you don't want to store the data in the database, you could perhaps use a logging library to write the information to an event log or file. You'd have to modify the code that does the insert to also log this data through that mechanism.
Hope this helps.
Related
today I come to you for inspiration or maybe ideas how to solve a task not killing my laptop with massive and repetitive code.
I have a CSV file with around 10k records. I also have a database with respective records in it. I have four fields inside both of these structures: destination, countryCode,prefix and cost
Every time I update a database with this .csv file I have to check if the record with given destination, countryCode and prefix exist and if so, I have to update the cost. That is pretty easy and it works fine.
But here comes the tricky part: there is a possibility that the destination may be deleted from one .csv file to another and I need to be aware of that and delete that unused record from the database. What is the most efficient way of handling that kind of situation?
I really wouldn't want to check every record from the database with every row in a .csv file: that sounds like a very bad idea.
I was thinking about some time_stamp or just a bool variable which will tell me if the record was modified during the last update of the DB BUT: there is also a chance that neither of params within the record change, thus: no need to touch that record and mark it as modified.
For that task, I use Python 3 and mysql.connector lib.
Any ideas and advice will be appreciated :)
If you're keeping a time stamp why do you care if it's updated even if nothing was changed in the record? If the reason is that you want to save the date of the latest update you can add another column saving a time stamp of the last time the record appeared in the csv and afterwords delete all the records that the value of this column in them is smaller than the date of the last csv.
If the .CSV is a replacement for the existing table:
CREATE TABLE new LIKE real;
load the .csv into `new` (Probably use LOAD DATA...)
RENAME TABLE real TO old, new TO real;
DROP TABLE old;
If you have good reason to keep the old table and patch it, then...
load the .csv into a table
add suitable indexes
do one SQL to do deletes (no loop needed). It is probably a multi-table DELETE.
do one sql to update the prices (no loop needed). It is probably a multi-table UPDATE.
You can probably do the entire task (either way) without touching Python.
I have a MySQL database preinstalled. I don't wont modify it. Does exist a built in method to check which and when a field has been modified in a specific table?
No, there's no built in method that does this in MySQL.
If you want this type of operation performed in the database, you would need to roll your own solution; and that would require you to modify the database, by adding tables and triggers to audit changes, for example.
I removed, what at the time I thought, was an unnecessary field/column from a table in mysql and now would like to import it back into the table. Just before I dropped the column, I did a backup of the whole table. Since then, close to 1000 new rows have been added.
How can I add the column and information back to the table?
I have a sandbox that I can "play" with. I have tried but have yet to get the proper end result. Thank you in advance.
Not sure if it matters but, the system is fedora 16.
What I would do is to load your dump into another table (e.g. table_bak, you might need to do this in your sandbox and redump). Then add your column back in to your live table with a sensible default value. Then you should be able to bring the old data back like this
UPDATE `table`,`table_bak` SET `table`.restored_column=`table_bak`.restored_column WHERE `table`.pk_id=`table_bak`.pk_id
Is there any way to automatically create a trigger on creation of new table in MySQL?
As I've pointed out in your other question, I think a process and security review is in order here. It's an audited database, so nobody (especially third-party service providers) should be creating tables in your database without your knowledge.
The issue you've got is, as well as the new table being created, you will also need to have another table created to store the audited/changed records, which will have an identical structure as the original table with possibly a time/date and user column. If a third-party provider is creating this table, they won't know to create the auditing table, therefore even if you could generate your triggers dynamically, they wouldn't work.
It's impossible to create a single table that will hold all changes record for all other tables in your database because the structure between tables inevitably differs.
Therefore: make all change requests (e.g. providers wants to create TableX, they submit a change request (including the SQL script) explaining the reason for the change) to yourself and/or your team.
You execute the SQL on a test copy of your database, and use the same structure to create another table to hold the modified records.
You then create and test the necessary triggers, generate a new SQL script to create the two tables and your triggers and execute that on your live database. You give your provider permissions to use the new table and away they go.
Everyone's happy. Yes, it may take a little while longer, and yes you'll have more work to do, but that's a hell of a lot less work than is required to try and parse query logs to re-create records that have already been changed/deleted, or parse the binary log and keep up-to-date with every change, and modify your code when the format of the log file changes etc etc.
I'm trying to use a simple mysql database but tweak it so that every field is backed up up to an indefinite number of versions. The best way I can illustrate this is by replacing each and every field of every table with a stack of all the values this field has ever had (each of these values should be timestamped). I guess it's kind of like having customized version control for all my data..
Any ideas on how to do this?
The usual method for "tracking any changes" to a table is to add insert/update/delete trigger procedures on the table and have those records saved in a history table.
For example, if your main data table is "ItemInfo" then you would also have an ItemInfo_History table that got a copy of the new record every time anything changed (via the triggers).
This keeps the performance of your primary table consistent, yet gives you access to the history of any changes if you need it.
Here are some examples, they are for SQL Server but they demonstrate the logic:
My Repository table
My Repository History table
My Repository Insert trigger procedure
My Repository Update trigger procedure
Hmm, what you're talking about sounds similar to Slowly Changing Dimension.
Be aware that version control on arbitrary database structures is officially a rather Hard Problem. :-)
A simple solution would be to add a version/revision field to the tables, and whenever a record is updated, instead of updating it in place, insert a copy with the changes applied and the version number incremented. Then when selecting, always choose the record with the latest version. That's roughly how most such schemes are implemented (e.g. Wikimedia does it pretty much this exact way).
Maybe a tool can help you to do that for you. Have a look at nextep designer :
https://github.com/christophefondacci/nextep-designer
With this IDE you will be able to take snapshots of your database structure and data and put it under version control. After this you can compute the differences between any 2 versions and generate the appropriate SQL that can insert / update / delete your data.
Maybe this is an alternative way to achieve what you wanted.