Auto-updated fields

Folks,

A co-worker pointed out to me that MySQL has a feature that, properly
implemented and maybe extended, could be handy, namely what MySQL
calls a "timestamp" field, so here's a proposal:

1.  Create a generic (possibly overloaded) trigger function, bundled
with PostgreSQL, which sets a field to some value.  For example, a
timestamptz version might set the field to now().

2.  Have some kind of pre-processing of CREATE and ALTER statements on
tables which would attach the above function to the field at hand,
something like:

CREATE TABLE foo(   last_updated TIMESTAMPTZ_UPDATED(),   ...
);

which would turn last_updated into a TIMESTAMPTZ with the expected
behavior on UPDATEs.

What do folks think of this idea?

Cheers,
David.
-- 
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

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