I have a situation where I need to keep track of all changes to the data in a MySQL database.
For example, we have a field in the "customers" table which will contain a rating that indicates how risky it is to do business with that customer. Whenever this field is changed, I need to have it logged so we can go back and say "well they were a 3 and now they are an 8," for example. Is there any automated way to handle this in MySQL or am I just going have to write tons of change tracking logic into the application itself?
This is the type of thing that triggers are designed for inside of MySQL assuming you're using a 5+ version of MySQL.
CREATE TRIGGER log_change_on_table BEFORE UPDATE ON customers
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
INSERT INTO customer_log (customer_id, rating, date)
VALUES (OLD.customer_id, OLD.rating, now())
END $$
Related
Hey guys a little question for you.
I'm currently working on SQL Triggers and my goal is to archive logging if there are changes made to our database. For example we got some tables like customers with: name, firstname, placeofbirth and so on. We offer the users to update their own data and want to save the OLD data in a new table for logging reasons. To have only one logging table for all updates the logging table is kind of generic with:
id, timestamp, table_name, column, old_value, new_value.
table_name is the updated table, colum the updated column in this table and all the rest should speak for itself. Therefore it would be great to know not only in which tuple but also in which particular column the update has happened.
My question: Is there a construct like:
create trigger logging_trigger on customer**.firstname** after insert ...
to trigger an action only if there happened an update on let's say the 'firstname' column?
If not is there a smooth solution for handling all possible update cases?
Thank you.
I use a format like you described in my system... Below is how I accomplish it with your required logic.
CREATE DEFINER = CURRENT_USER TRIGGER `testing_schema`.`new_table_BEFORE_UPDATE` BEFORE UPDATE ON `new_table` FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
IF NEW.ColumnName <> OLD.ColumnName THEN
INSERT INTO HistoryTable (`ColumnName1`, `ColumnName2`, ect..) VALUES (OLD.ColumnName1, OLD.ColumnName2, ect...);
END IF;
END
The main difference In mine is, that I do not have an IF condition. I simply copy the entire row to the history table every time an Update/Delete is made to that row. That way I don't have to maintain any form of logic to handle scenarios of investigating "what changed", I just save the entire row because I know "something" changed.
I have MySQL tables that are all InnoDB.
We have so many copies of various databases spread across multiple servers (trust me we're talking hundreds here), and many of them are not being queried at all.
How can I get a list of the MAX(LastAccessDate) for example for all tables within a specific database? Esp. considering that they are InnoDB tables.
I would prefer knowing even where the "select" query was run, but would settle for "insert/update" as well, since, if a db hasn't changed in a long time, it's probably dead.
If you have a table that always gets values inserted you can add a trigger to the update/insert. Inside this trigger you can set the current timestamp in a dedicated database, including the name of the database from which the insert took place.
This way the only requirement of your database is that it supports triggers.
Alternatively you could take a look this link:
odify date and create date for a table can be retrieved from sys.tables catalog view. When any structural changes are made the modify date is updated. It can be queried as follows:
USE [SqlAndMe]
GO
SELECT [TableName] = name,
create_date,
modify_date
FROM sys.tables
WHERE name = 'TransactionHistoryArchive'
GO
sys.tables only shows modify date for structural changes. If we need to check when was the tables last updated or accessed, we can use dynamic management view sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats. This DMV returns counts of different types of index operations and last time the operation was performed.
It can be used as follows:
USE [SqlAndMe]
GO
SELECT [TableName] = OBJECT_NAME(object_id),
last_user_update, last_user_seek, last_user_scan, last_user_lookup
FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats
WHERE database_id = DB_ID('SqlAndMe')
AND OBJECT_NAME(object_id) = 'TransactionHistoryArchive'
GO
last_user_update – provides time of last user update
last_user_* – provides time of last scan/seek/lookup
It is important to note that sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats counters are reset when SQL Server service is restarted.
Hope This Helps!
I have a table named Warehouse for my database, it has Warehouse_idWarehouse and Warehouse_name as primary keys. What i want to do is to efficiently store a maximum of N recent changes that have been made to each warehouse that is stored in the table. I have considered creating a "helper" table (e.g. warehouse_changes) and taking care of the updates through my application, but honestly it feels like there is a smarter way around this.
Is there a way to store a specific amount of entries per warehouse and automatically manage updating the right element through mysql workbench? Thanks in advance and keep in mind that i'm not particularly advanced in this field.
There is a very detailed article on O'Reilly Answers that describes how to do exactly what you want using triggers.
When explained in two words, you need to create a helper table and a trigger per each operation type that you want to store. For example, here's how a trigger for updates looks like according to that article:
-- Creating a trigger that will run after each update
-- for each affected row
CREATE TRIGGER au_warehouse AFTER UPDATE ON Warehouse FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
-- Insert new values into a log table, or you can insert old values
-- using the OLD row reference
INSERT INTO warehouse_log (action, id, ts, name)
VALUES('update', NEW.id, NOW(), NEW.name);
END;
After that you can get the latest 1000 changes using a simple SQL query:
SELECT * FROM warehouse_log ORDER BY ts DESC LIMIT 1000;
Is it possible to use any sort of logic in MySQL without using any procedures? My web hosting does not let me create any procedures so I'm looking for a workaround.
The type of thing I want to do is only add an item to a table if it doesn't already exist. Or add a column to a table if it's not already there. There are some operations that can be done such as CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS and so on, but some operations I require do not have such luxuries :(
I realised late on that my lovely procs won't work and so I tried writing IF/ELSE logic as top-level queries, but for MySQL, IF ELSE blocks only seem to work inside functions/procs and not at the global scope.
Any workarounds greatfully received - I've already asked the hosting to grant me privileges to create procedures but no reply as yet...
I suppose you don't have access to the INFORMATION_SCHEMA either. You can possibly find solutions but it would be better, in my oninion, to:
Change your hosting provider. Seriously. Pay more - if needed - for a MySQL instance that you can configure to your needs. You only have a crippled DBMS if you are not allowed to create procedures and functions.
Posible workarounds for the specific task: You want to add a column if it doesn't exist.
1) Just ALTER TABLE and add the column. If it already exists, you'll get an error. You can catch that error, in your application.
2) (If you have no access to the INFORMATION_SCHEMA) maintain a version of the schema, for your database.
The best solution that I can think of would be to use an additional language with SQL. For example, you can run a query for a specific record, and based on the response that you get, you can conditionally run an INSERT statement.
For inserting a table if it doesn't exist, try using the SHOW TABLES statement and testing whether or not a name exists in the result set.
MySQL supports INSERT IGNORE. and INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE.
The following will insert a new row, but only if there is no existing row with id=10. (This assumes that id is defined as a unique or primary key).
INSERT IGNORE INTO my_table (id, col1, col2) values (10, "abc", "def");
The following will insert a new row, but if there is an existing row with id=10 (again, assuming id is unique or primary), the existing row will be updated to hold the new values, instead of inserting a new row.
INSERT INTO my_table (id, col1, col2) values (10, "abc", "def")
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE col1=VALUES(col1), col2=VALUES(col2)
Also, CREATE TABLE supports the IF NOT EXISTS modifier. So you can do something like:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS my_table ...
There are many other similar options and modifiers available in MySQL. Check the docs for more.
Originally I created a big script to create or update the database schema, to make it easier to deploy database changes from my local machine to the server.
My script was doing a lot of "if table 'abc' exists and it doesn't have a FK constraint called 'blah'" then create an FK constraint called 'blah' on table 'abc'... and so on.
I now realise it's not actually necessary to check whether a table has a certain column or constraint etc, because I can just maintain a schema-versioning system, and query the DB schema-version when my app starts, or when I navigate to a certain page.
e.g. let's say I want to add a new column to a table. It works like this:
Add a new migration script to the app code, containing the SQL required to add the column to the existing table
Increment the app's schema-version by 1
On app startup, the app queries the DB for the DB's schema-version
If DB schema-version < app schema-version, execute the SQL migration scripts between the two schema-versions, and then update the DB schema-version to be the same as the app
e.g. if the DB's schema-version is 5 and the app version is 8, the app will apply migration scripts 5-6, 6-7 and 7-8 to the DB. These can just be run without having to check anything on the DB side.
The app is therefore solely responsible for updating the DB schema and there's no need for me to ever have to execute schema change scripts on the local or remote DB.
I think it's a better system than the one I was trying to implement for my question.
I am working on some database project (PHP/MySQL) used for billing.
Whenever a new bill is created I want to generate a bill number consisting of year, week and increment number. I would like to do this with a trigger. The trigger will use the existing billnumbers to find the increment number or start with a fresh increment for the first bill n a new week and/or new year.
Apart from generating the bill number, I can do a BEFORE INSERT trigger and set the NEW.billnumber to the newly generated billnumber. It is also possible to do an AFTER INSERT and update the record with the generated billnumber.
My question is which one should I choose. BEFORE INSERT or AFTER INSERT? I did search for this, but I can't find a good argumentation when to use BEFORE or AFTER.
Found out that it can be done with BEFORE INSERT only because MySQL does not allow manipulation of the table that triggered the AFTER INSERT trigger.