CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysqlpdotriggers
Yugal1458
Yugal1458

Reputation: 71

Mysql trigger or coding in PHP?

I have a table hardware_description:

+------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field            | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Computer_id      | int(11)      | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| Emp_id           | int(11)      | NO   | MUL | NULL    |                |
| PC_type          | varchar(20)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Operating_system | varchar(20)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Product_key      | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Assign_date      | date         | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| DVD_ROM          | varchar(20)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| CPU              | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| IP_address       | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| MAC_address      | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Model_name       | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Model_number     | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Monitor          | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Processor        | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Product_name     | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| RAM              | varchar(20)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Serial_number    | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Vendor_id        | varchar(30)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |

Emp_id is foreign key from employees table.

When I update a particular row, I want the existing data for that row to be saved in another table along with the timestamp of that update action. Now,

a) Shall I use PHP code (PDO transaction) to first grab that row & insert in another table then perform the UPDATE query on that particular row?

b) Use trigger on this table.

Which process is better practice & more efficient? Is there another way of achieving this?

I have not used trigger in my short career so far but I can do it if it is better practice.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 77

Answers (1)

Zerium
Zerium

Reputation: 17333

If you can do a trigger, it would be a lot better to use that.

The reason for this is that if for some reason you forget to write the PHP code to do this (in some weird situation) - you would have missing, unrelated data - otherwise known as orphaned data, which does not have a corresponding row or set of rows.

Here's the link to the MySQL documentation page for triggers: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/create-trigger.html

Upvotes: 1

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