Is there an automatic modification time stamp type for Oracle columns?

Question

Is there a way to create a timestamp column in Oracle that automatically stores a timestamp of when the record has changed ?

Answer 1

You can get very close to this by querying ORA_ROWSCN: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/pseudocolumns007.htm#sthref825

This is more accurate if you created the table with the ROWDEPENDENCIES option.

It actually logs the commit time for the record ...

drop table tester 
/

create table tester (col1 number, col2 timestamp)
rowdependencies
/

insert into tester values (1, systimestamp)
/

(approximate five second pause)

commit
/

select t.ora_rowscn,
       SCN_TO_TIMESTAMP(t.ora_rowscn),
       t.col1,
       t.col2
from   tester t
/

ORA_ROWSCN             SCN_TO_TIMESTAMP(T.ORA_ROWSCN) COL1                   COL2
---------------------- ------------------------------ ---------------------- -------------------------
9104916600628          2009-10-26 09.26.38.000000000  1                      2009-10-26 09.26.35.109848000