Never delete entries? Good idea? Usual?

Question

I am designing a system and I don\'t think it\'s a good idea to give the ability to the end user to delete entries in the database. I think that way because often then end u

Answer 1

I agree with all respondents that if you can afford to keep old data around forever it's a good idea; for performance and simplicity, I agree with the suggestion of moving "logically deleted" records to "old stuff" tables rather than adding "is_deleted" flags (moving to a totally different database seems a bit like overkill, but you can easily change to that more drastic approach later if eventually the amount of accumulated data turns out to be a problem for a single db with normal and "old stuff" tables).