I've worked at companies where soft delete was implemented everywhere, even in irrelevant internal systems... I think it's a cultural thing! I still remember a college professor scolding me on an extension project because I hadn't implemented soft delete... in his words, "In the business world, data is never deleted!!"

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salomonk_mur 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But... It's true. Deleting data completely is an easy way to gimp and lobotomize your future analysis.

Storage is cheap. Never delete data.

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yxhuvud an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Deleting data is also a very easy way to not get GDPR compliance issues. Data is a cost and a risk, and should be minimised to what is actually relevant. Storage is the least part of the cost.

	▲	phito 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Not an issue if you're not building SaaS

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ziml77 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I prefer audit tables. Soft deletes don't capture updates, audit tables do (you could make every update a delete and insert in a soft delete table, but that adds a lot of bloat to the table)

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mrkeen 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No comment from the professor on modifications though?