Is adding a bit mask to all tables in a database useful?

Posted by Tom on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Tom
Published on 2010-05-12T03:40:51Z Indexed on 2010/05/12 3:44 UTC
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A colleague is adding a bit mask to all our database tables. In theory this is so we can track certain properties of each row across the entire system. For example...

Is the row shipped with the system or added by the client once they've started using the system
Has the row been deleted from the table (soft deletes)
Is the row a default value within a set of rows

Is this a good idea? Are there other uses where this approach would be beneficial?

My preference is these properties are obviously important, and having a dedicated column for each property is justified to make what is happening clearer to fellow developers.

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