MySQL Bugs: #2681: Ability to determine when DB was last modified (generic method)

Bug #2681	Ability to determine when DB was last modified (generic method)
Submitted:	9 Feb 2004 5:14	Modified:	28 Nov 2005 10:55
Reporter:	Phil Sladen
Status:	Verified
Category:	Server: InnoDB	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:	4.1.0	OS:	Linux (Linux 9.0)
Assigned to:	Heikki Tuuri	Target Version:
Triage:	Triaged: D5 (Feature request)

Description:
My application potentially supports many discrete databases, only a few of which many be
modified each day, and I would like to keep each one backed up separately. Currently,
since I cannot determine which ones have been modified since the last backup run I have
to back them all up each time.

I've queried the MySQL general email list to try to find out how you can determine when a
database was last updated, but with no success. The best response I could get was to check
the modification times on the database files themselves. However, this doesn't work for
InnoDB tables since the data for all InnoDB tables seems to be kept in the same
file(s)... so that checking their modification time(s) would only tell you that a
database with InnoDB tables has been updated, and not which particular database.

Also, if I resorted to using 'show table status' on all of a database's tables this
displays 'NULL' in the 'Update time' column for InnoDB tables.

Please add this enhancement. Thanks, Phil

How to repeat:
This is a feature request. Thanks.

Thank you for a feature request. 

At least, keeping track of the last update time for each InnoDB table (as it is done for
MyISAM) will create a useful base for answering the question. INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
also have a column (UPDATE_TIME) just for that (it works so for MyISAM tables)

Are the plans add this feature?  If so in what release?

There has been no activity on this request for almost 2 years.

This would be good feature to have. If it existed it could be used by a client application
to determine a table should be re-read or not.