Question

I was using phpmyadmin to insert some dummy data into a table, and noticed it structured the insert like this:

INSERT INTO `arc`.`transactions` (
    `txn_id` ,
    `date_time`  )
VALUES (
    '50005',
    CURRENT_TIMESTAMP );

Normally, I’d just not include the field “date_time” and the value is created by mySQL (as the field is of type timestamp), and auto-updates whenever you insert or update a record.

Is there any reason to structure the query as you see it above, explicitly inserting CURRENT_TIMESTAMP? Or is this a phpmyadmin oddity?

Answer 1

It could also be a matter of compatibility. CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is defined by the SQL standard. Automatically updated timestamp columns are not. An app that wants to be portable and record timestamps is better off explicitly specifying the currrent timestamp. And what better way to do that than to use the standard, built-in CURRENT_TIMESTAMP function?