Re: Row / Record Versioning Design

[Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The primary keys are a description of an item and the version number?

That description thing worries me a bit. It leaves editing of the 
description as an on-going challenge, and could become messy for grouping.

I have no idea how many items you are keeping track of, but my own 
preferences are:
Key 1: location/department/bldg/floor/etc.
Key 2: type/name/category
Key 3: Unique ID
Key 4: Versioning

(As many or as few keys as needed to allow managing the database.)

On 1/15/2015 7:51 PM, Holm, Paul wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Looking for design ideas or experience with the following.
>
> We are creating a DB to hold equipment where each record holds a
> description of equipment.  They want to have the ability to have 1 to many
> "versions" of the record.  For example, if a device firmware or
> configuration is updated, they want to maintain the old record.
>
> I'm thinking I can accomplish all this by simply adding a "Version" column
> to the database.  Version could have values such as "1.0", "1.2", or
> *CURRENT if it's the latest.   When a new version is needed, we simply copy
> the record and update the VERSION  field.
>
> Feedback with this approach?
>
> Thanks in advance, Paul