history rows management in database

Question

As in many databases, i am designing a database that should keep record of previous versions of the rows changed in each table.

The standard solution to this problem is

Answer 1

As with others, I use an ORM (Propel) with a Base Object containing custom save & delete methods. These methods override the standard save & delete that come with the ORM. They check to see which columns have changed, and create 1 row in the change table for each changed column.

Schema for change table: change_pk, user_fk, user_name, session_id, ip_address, method, table_name, row_fk, field_name, field_value, most_recent, date_time

Example: 1, 4232, 'Gnarls Barkley', 'f2ff3f8822ff23', '234.432.324.694', 'UPDATE', 'User', 4232, 'first_name', 'Gnarles', 'Y', '2009-08-20 10:10:10';