Creating a Date Updated Field in Tables

By Chris Miller on 24 August 2000 | Tags: Database Design

John writes "I need to create a date updated field in all tables in my database. I want these to be automatically filled in by the database, on insert and update. I know I can use triggers to do this, but it means writing a trigger for each of the 80+ tables. Is there any better way of doing this? I am working on SQL server 7.0/win nt 4.0/ASP...Thanks, JohnA"

There really isn't any other way other than using a trigger to do what you're trying to do. You may want to look at writing the shell for the script using a query, and then go from there. The query below works, but it assumes that the primary key for each table is called "id". It would be pretty easy to make it figure out how to do a single-column primary key and substitute that in, but composite keys would be a bit more difficult and would likely need a cursor, and I didn't have time to write one of those here. This should get you started, though:

select 'create trigger ' + name + '_updatedate on ' + name + ' for update not for replication 
as 
   update ' + name + ' set update_date = getdate()
	where id in (select id from inserted)
'
from sysobjects where type = 'u'

rocketscientist.