How to retrieve timestamp of record creation

  • I have to believe that SQL has a timestamp on each record indicating when it was created. I also can't believe that this cannot be retrieved, but I am having great difficulty finding any information on it. Apparently my search skills are subpar.

    I'm examining a database trying to determine what is going wrong with a program at a customer site (I do tech support, not programming, although I dabble in that) and it would be a huge help to be able to tell exactly when records were created.

  • Not so. You have to add a timestamp if you want one.

  • Thank you for the reply.

    Bummer, I was hoping there was some sort of automatic background thing that was part of the database that wouldn't show unless you looked for it.

  • Just to clarify laurie-789651's statement - you'd need to add a column with a default value of GetDate(). This would be a time-stamp, as oppose to a timestamp, which is a rowversion value http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182776(v=sql.105).aspx. Fortunately timestamp is being deprecated so this little area of fun and confusion should eventually vanish.

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