Question

I need to access database of a remote application. And keep track of modification of data on daily basis. Also all the tables don’t have timestamp field and I’m not allowed to use triggers as well. How can this be done?

Answer 1

Usually tables have a PRIMARY KEY, like an index. Do a periodic run of a script (daily), like a script that

• do show tables query to list all tables
• sort tables alphabetically

• run an algorithm like

  file = "yyyy-mm-dd-"  // todays file
  for table in ListOfTables
  {
    echo TABLE table >> file
    query('SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY PRIMARY KEY') >> file
  }
  

• do a diff (linux) between todays file and yesterday’s file to get a list of changes.