any way to tell when a column was added to a table?

  • No datetime fields in syscolumns, and the create date field in sysobjects is for the whole table, not the most recently added column.

    My oldest backup is about a month and I'm pretty sure the column was added before then. Is there any system table or other resource I could check to get a definitive answer on when a table had a specific column added?

    This WAS the most recent column added.

    Thanks,

    Greg

  • Unfortunately, unless you had some sort of auditing application in place at the time the change was made there is only one way to find this out.  If your database is not in Simple recovery mode and you have the transaction log backups you can use a tool like Lumigent's Log Explorer to search through the logs and find the add column operation.  Unfortunately if this is a busy database you could be looking for a very small needle in a very large haystack...  And if your database is in Simple recovery mode or you don't have your log backups, you are totally out of luck.

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    If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this. -Friedrich August von Hayek

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  • I was pretty sure that was the case. Thanks for the confirmation. Unlucky!

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