Question

One of my database fields in a table is getting modified by some piece of code. I just can’t figure out where!

So, I was wondering if there’s a way I can find out.

I’m using SQL 2008. Can Profiler be used to find out if a particular field is getting updated? How?

What about a Trigger? If using a trigger (eg. on UPDATE) can you determine what code called it? How can the trigger ‘notify me’ of this? Email/file?

Answer 1

Yes, an “AFTER UPDATE” trigger on that particular table and field might give you some clues as to when and why the field gets changed.

From Books Online:

CREATE TRIGGER reminder
ON Person.Address
AFTER UPDATE 
AS 
  IF ( UPDATE (StateProvinceID) OR UPDATE (PostalCode) )
  BEGIN
    RAISERROR (50009, 16, 10)
  END;
GO

A trigger can execute basically any T-SQL code – if you have database mail set up correctly, it could send you an e-mail, yes. Or it can write an audit entry into another table or something like that.

EDIT: If you need to find out which statements updated your column, you might be actually better off running a trace on the server, limited to that specific table, and just trace what’s happening there. I don’t think a trigger can give you that information (which code caused the update to happen).

Marc