Re: How to find the view modified date and time and user name

On Thu, Jun 6, 2024 at 9:14 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Ron Johnson <ronljohnsonjr(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > What matters is that the DBA can see "ah, Bob altered table foo last
> > Thursday at 14:30. Let's check the log file to see what he did."
>
> I'm not finding that argument terribly convincing. If you have a
> DDL log file, you can grep it to find the last change (and the
> ones before that, in case it was Alice's fault not Bob's). If
> you don't have such a log file, how much does a last-changed
> timestamp really help you?
>

1. That's not terribly helpful if it was altered three weeks ago, but you
only keep two weeks of log files.
2. "I'm telling you, PHB, that table hasn't been modified in the past two
years. See? Says so right here in the database."
3. "What happened to the index that's needed for the monthly reports?"

Bottom line: sometimes, "everyone else does it" for very good and important
reasons that are *vital* but rare.