Always automatically fill in RecordCreated, RecordCreatedBy, RecordUpdated, RecordUpdatedBy as system fields

ideas
1

Context

In one of our project we needed to track what happened in the system. I wanted to check when the object instance has been created and some audit log entries in OrigamDataAuditLog table.

  1. The object instance had been created from another object instance as a copy.
  2. Inside transformation I used just copy all fields.

Expected behaviour

  1. I have expected that the fields RecordCreated, RecordCreatedBy, RecordUpdated, RecordUpdatedBy are always filled automatically as system fields by current datetime and current users.
  2. I have expected that OrigamDataAuditLog would display current datetime as the entry changes.

Actual behaviour

  1. As the object instance has been copied. The “system” fields have been copied as well. So my new object instance had creation date the same as the original instance.
  2. OrigamDataAuditLog saved datetime the same as RecordCreated, so the original datetime of the original object instance.

Solution by model

  1. I can solve by changing XSLT transformations to always empty these fields.

Solution by platform

I would recommend that these fields are suggested as system fields and always displays the truth. As for backtracking the changes and evaluate the software behaviour I would expect the auditlog always truthful.

I can imagine following scenarios:

  1. Enable / Disable the behaviour in application (origam) settings (something like AlwaysSetSystemFields). Default value would be true. This setting can be configured for backwards compatibility if there is some solution / model which expects this behaviour.
  2. Set up at transformation properties or on the workflow step in the model whether to (not) replace system fields. Default would be again true. This would allow to change behaviour if I really want to replace such fields and I know what I want to achieve.

Notes

  1. I don’t want to always test if I copy object how the system fields are filled. I want to have platform that ensures this default behaviour.
  2. And I don’t want to always remember that if I make a copy by transformation, I want to remove copy of these “system” fields. I guess that it could be also a surprise for new designers.