Question

How can I capture the time at which a record was added to the database – effortlessly. I am using this

create table YourTable
(
  Created datetime default getdate()
)

ANy other alternatives?

Answer 1

Still in the vein of using a default constraint… there are other values you can consider using — different advantages to each (involving universal time, precision, etc.).

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188383.aspx

Also — consider the size of your data type — datetime is 8bytes — you could define the column as smalldatetime and improve that to 4 bytes (or in 2008, just plain old date, which is 3bytes — though you might actually like knowing the time as well).

Triggers are also an option, but not preferable IMO — for one thing, they can be rolled-back if any constraints are violated (such as external relationship to a table you just created, forgetting about the trigger — oops!)