When was an object last modified?

  • Hi all ...

    just wondering if someone knows of a way to figure out when an object (ie. table) was last modified?? (ie. a new column added, index added etc.) There must be a way to use the system tables to get this info??

    Thanks,

    R.

  • Columns in sysobjects table:

    - crdate - date when table was created.

    - refdate - not used, reserved for future, currently value is equal to crdate.

    - schema_ver - incremented every time schema for a table is changed.

    Depending on your needs, schema_ver may be enough. Otherwise... Can you write a trigger on sysobjects and log whatever you want? How would it affect a production system? I never tried it but you could try.

    Michael

  • You are not supposed to place any triggers on system objects. They are not guaranteed to work and they can cause unexpected issues.

    The best way I have seen most people do is create a table similar to syscolumns, sysindexes, sysobjects and some of the others and scan them daily, if anything is different you mark it however you choose. I know I have put this on my wishlist for the future.

  • I do what Antares suggested when I want to track changes.

    Triggers on system tables are not guarentted to fire.

    Steve Jones

    sjones@sqlservercentral.com

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones

  • Again, just write a job that periodically checks for changes in schema_ver column of sysobjects and captures that data in a special user defined table.

    Michael

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