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Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

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    Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

    Hi All...

    Just curious how others set their systems up for users to be allowed to delete a record. Right now I have it as a Admin level option only but in some cases this is cumbersome. In other cases the object between the keyboard and chair will make a mess.

    My thought is to setup what I refer to as a soft delete. Basically when the user clicks delete a hidden field is "checked" and the record is saved. Then all records in the list will be filtered not to show those records where "Delete" equals 1.

    This would make it easy to restore and easy to see who the user who deleted the record was.

    Any thoughts on this???

    Thanks
    Joe
    Never take a ride to the edge of your mind unless you've got a ticket back - Jon Oliva - Savatage.

    #2
    Re: Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

    The "soft delete" is how I handle things. Inevitably a user will want to recover their "permanently" deleted file. Also, sometimes a user will delete the wrong file but lie about it and blame the software instead. This way the file can be recovered. I also log who/when on file deletes.
    Mike Brown - Contact Me
    Programmatic Technologies, LLC
    Programmatic-Technologies.com
    Independent Developer & Consultant​​

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

      Just about every table in my database has a column used to indicate a "soft" delete. Linking tables that join two tables together do not have a "soft" delete column and some global configuration tables that I use to configure the system for the client, do not have "soft" delete column.

      The forms that browse/update the primary tables all include several search fields, one of which is the "soft" delete column (I call it "Record Status" with values of "Active" and "Inactive" -- i'm not real happy with those two names) and that search arguments default to only showing "Active" records.

      On the record Update forms, I always place the "soft" delete column (field) as a dropdown control at the end of the first data entry row.

      On critical tables I do not allow deletes (based on Alpha's Security Group) for any user but myself. But on a lot of tables users have a choice between soft delete (by making the record "Inactive" from the "Record Status" box) or a hard delete (clicking the "Delete" icon, provided they have enough security permissions to even see the "Delete" icon, according to Alpha's built-in security).

      On the small lookup tables that just have a code and a description, I typically display a red-stop sign in the dropdown list (implemented as a Grid lookup) to indicate they should not use the particular code anymore.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

        yup soft delete is my preference, normally a bit column called "obsolete". Watch out though as its easy to include these "obsolete" records in reports if you forget they are there.

        for that reason we try to use views everywhere for reports with these hidden.

        Third option
        create a "archive table" my_table_archive with all the same columns
        Place a After Delete trigger on the my_table and insert the delete record into the Archive_table.
        Its harder to get the data back into the main table as identity inserts may need disabling, but it stops data appearing in reports that should have been deleted.
        You can also add an extra column to record the timestamp of the delete.


        Anyone ever use the 3rd option over a "soft" delete? and why?

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

          When dealing with many millions of records, using an archive table keeps the record numbers down.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

            Thank you for all of your input.

            Just curious. How do you restore a record that was deleted from an Archive table?
            Never take a ride to the edge of your mind unless you've got a ticket back - Jon Oliva - Savatage.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

              Joe, that could be done a bunch of ways, however, it might just be a simple INSERT back into the table it came from in the first place
              NWCOPRO: Nuisance Wildlife Control Software My Application: http://www.nwcopro.com "Without forgetting, we would have no memory at all...now what was I saying?"

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

                To go along with what Jonathan said in Post # 6 about using triggers to make a copy of hard deleted record into an archive table, I would use Stored Procedures for moving the data back from the Archive table to the real table. With stored procedure you can:
                1) begin transaction,
                2) error check (make sure the original identify value(s) has/have not been re-used in main table,
                3) turn IDENTITY inserts on,
                4) write data from archive back to original table specifying the identity value from the archive table is to be written back to original table,
                5) delete archive records,
                6) turn identity off,
                7) close transaction.

                Here is info on IDENTITY insert for SQL:
                https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql...ql-server-2017

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

                  Thank you to all who contributed to this, I will now be using the archive table route. I have learnt something today, if you delete a record and trigger it to go into an archive you can later retrieve said record very simply because MySQL has Identity insert always turned on, and as all my tables primary keys are set to auto-increment I should not get a problem. Unless somebody knows any different?

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Opinion Question on Deleting Records...

                    Check out this video I made almost 7 years ago. (Man, time flies by) https://www.screencast.com/t/BVqHVloOG9e

                    I perform a soft delete on the record. Usually, when someone needs the record undeleted it is within a month. I keep the database optimized by deleting the older deleted records after a year.

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