MySQL: notify on field change?

[bruceg]

I am attempting to provide some sort of audit system for a db I am constructing, and one of the requirements, is to log when a user changes data in a field. For simple varchar fields, with a fixed number of characters, this is fairly simple, by comparing the two fields, before and after.

I need to however, at least log the fact that a textarea, which has a datatype of mediumtext has at least changed. Comparing the two strings could be enourmous in some cases, so a simple log entry that user X, changed field Y, at time Z, would suffice. Is there any database function that could help me out with this, or what would be the best strategy to handle this?

[AstroTeg]

For MySQL, you'd need to do this from within your application code or you need to select another database engine to one that supports triggers.

[bruceg]

I kind of thought this might require triggers. Looks like I will try this in PHP, and wait until MySQL supports triggers. Thanks!

• Bruce

[AstroTeg]

If available, you might look into PostgreSQL. I haven't played with it (yet) but I understand it has all sorts of nifty features like triggers.