Modified Date Unchanged in Database

Need help Database
1

Hi everybody,

When debugging an app, I remarked that the built-in modified date field in the database is not necessarily updated, if an operation results in the same value.

Let’s break it down:

  • Let’s take a back-end workflow that recursively changes a list of things in a database. The operation looks like that: it updates an amount field for a given period, then proceeds to the next amount field for the next period, until all amount fields have been updated.
  • When checking the modified date, you will expect that every date have been updated with the workflow date. But that’s not the case.
  • When investigating this, I remarked that the only things for which the modified date is not updated are the one that got the same results, e.g. the back-end workflow worked as normal but the result was the same as the one already in the amount field.

It got me confused at first, because I thought the workflow was not working, even if the operation appeared in the server logs.

Did you encounter the same situation?

This is not a big problem, as long as you know how the modified date field behaves. I don’t know if this is a bug or intentional. But I’d say I would prefer the modified date to be updated nonetheless. What do you think?

2

I’d expect it to be whenever the data was updated. If the data is identical as it was before the workflow then arguably it hasn’t been modified.

I didn’t actually know about this and haven’t had any issues with it in the past but it’s good to know for future! I’m personally fine with the current behaviour.

2 Likes
3

Thank you for your response George

4

No update, no change of date and time looks normal to me. But you can create a separate date field and update that after every “no change” :upside_down_face:

1 Like
5

I will create a separate field if required, thank you