Data change history with audit tables: Grouping changes

Question

Lets say I want to store users and groups in a MySQL database. They have a relation n:m. To keep track of all changes each table has an audit table user_journal, group_journal a

Answer 1

Assuming you're rate of adding a batch of users to a group is less than once a second....

I would suggest simply adding a column of type timestamp named something like added_timestamp to the user_group and user_group_journal. DO NOT MAKE THIS AN AUTO UPDATE TIMESTAMP OR DEFAULT IT TO CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, instead, in your code when you insert by batch into the user_group, calculate the current date and time, then manually set this for all the new user_group record.

You may need to tweak your setup to add the field to be copied the rest of the new user_group record into the user_group_journal table.

Then when you could create a query/view that groups on a group_id and the new added_timestamp column.

If more fidelity is needed then 1 second you could use a string column and populate it with a string representation of a more granular time (which you'd need to generate however the libraries your language of use allows).

Answer 2

I played a bit around and now I found a very good solution:

The Database setup

# First of all I create the database and the basic table:

DROP DATABASE `mytest`;
CREATE DATABASE `mytest`;
USE `mytest`;
CREATE TABLE `test` (
    `id` INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `something` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
);

# Then I add an audit table to the database:

CREATE TABLE `audit_trail_test` (
    `_id` INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `_revision_id` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    `id` INT NOT NULL,
    `something` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
);

# I added a field _revision_id to it. This is 
# the ID that groups together all changes a
# user made within a request of that web
# application (written in PHP). So we need a
# third table to store the time and the user
# that made the changes of that revision:

CREATE TABLE `audit_trail_revisions` (
    `id` INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `user_id` INT NOT NULL,
    `time` DATETIME NOT NULL
);

# Now we need a procedure that creates a
# record in the revisions table each time an
# insert or update trigger will be called.

DELIMITER $$

CREATE PROCEDURE create_revision_record()
BEGIN
    IF @revision_id IS NULL THEN
        INSERT INTO `audit_trail_revisions`
            (user_id, `time`)
                VALUES
            (@user_id, @time);
        SET @revision_id = LAST_INSERT_ID();
    END IF;
END;

# It checks if a user defined variable
# @revision_id is set and if not it creates
# the row and stores the generated ID (auto
# increment) into that variable.
# 
# Next I wrote the two triggers:

CREATE TRIGGER `test_insert` AFTER INSERT ON `test` 
    FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
        CALL create_revision_record();
        INSERT INTO `audit_trail_test`
            (
                id,
                something,
                _revision_id
            ) 
        VALUES
            (
                NEW.id,
                NEW.something,
                @revision_id
            );
    END;
$$

CREATE TRIGGER `test_update` AFTER UPDATE ON `test` 
    FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
        CALL create_revision_record();
        INSERT INTO `audit_trail_test`
            (
                id,
                something,
                _revision_id
            ) 
        VALUES
            (
                NEW.id,
                NEW.something,
                @revision_id
            );
    END;
$$

The application code (PHP)

$iUserId = 42;

$Database = new \mysqli('localhost', 'root', 'root', 'mytest');

if (!$Database->query('SET @user_id = ' . $iUserId . ', @time = NOW()'))
    die($Database->error);
if (!$Database->query('INSERT INTO `test` VALUES (NULL, "foo")'))
    die($Database->error);
if (!$Database->query('UPDATE `test` SET `something` = "bar"'))
    die($Database->error);

// To simulate a second request we close the connection,
// sleep 2 seconds and create a second connection.
$Database->close();
sleep(2);
$Database = new \mysqli('localhost', 'root', 'root', 'mytest');

if (!$Database->query('SET @user_id = ' . $iUserId . ', @time = NOW()'))
    die($Database->error);
if (!$Database->query('UPDATE `test` SET `something` = "baz"'))
    die($Database->error);

And … the result

mysql> select * from test;
+----+-----------+
| id | something |
+----+-----------+
|  1 | baz       |
+----+-----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select * from audit_trail_test;
+-----+--------------+----+-----------+
| _id | _revision_id | id | something |
+-----+--------------+----+-----------+
|   1 | 1            |  1 | foo       |
|   2 | 1            |  1 | bar       |
|   3 | 2            |  1 | baz       |
+-----+--------------+----+-----------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select * from audit_trail_revisions;
+----+---------+---------------------+
| id | user_id | time                |
+----+---------+---------------------+
|  1 |      42 | 2013-02-03 17:13:20 |
|  2 |      42 | 2013-02-03 17:13:22 |
+----+---------+---------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Please let me know if there is a point I missed. I will have to add an action column to the audit tables to be able to record deletions.