Checking form differences

[Anon]

Hi,

I'm working on a type of "community" website where each user gets an account where they have their age, name, ICQ #, etc. stored in a users database. Anyway, I've got an edit page where they can edit various aspects of their account. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to how I could check which fields changed when they submitted the form and only include those fields in the update query. What I'm doing now is basically just checking each individual field to see if it changed; if it did, then I'm setting the new value to a variable name, if not, the variable gets the old value, and then I'm just updating every single field with the new variable (which is either the updated value or the value which they left alone). I have a feeling this is pretty inefficient and I can't stand that but I can't figure out a way to only update the changed values. Any help would be appreciated.

--Intaglio

[Anon]

checking each individual field to see if it changed; if it did, then I'm
setting the new value to a variable name, if not, the variable gets
the old value, and then I'm just updating every single field with the
new variable (which is either the updated value or thevalue which
they left alone).

How huge are these fields? I suspect your efficiency concerns are
exeggerated. One obvious optimization is to omit the non-changed
fields from the UPDATE query, but do do have to worry about Knuth's
dictum ("premature optimization is the root of all evil".) Are you
sure the change-checking isn't eating up most of time that would
be saved by sending a smaller update query back to the server?
The only way to really know for sure is to implement both methods
and see which one is faster.