SQL Server: Get Object Last Modified Date

Suppose you want to track when was the last time a particular SQL Server object (table, view, procedure etc) was modified. To do so, you can make use of the system views - sys.objects and sys.all_objects.

Consider this example

create table test(id int, names varchar(100))
GO
select name, create_date, modify_date
from sys.objects
where name='test'

The above gives you the create_date and modify_date (in this case both will be the same).



Now alter the table to change the width of the column names

alter table test
alter column names varchar(150)
GO

Now execute the same select statement again:

Executing the above statement gives you the create_date and modify_date (in this case modify_date will be greater than the create_date). Whenever there is a column change in the table, the modify_date column gets updated.

Note: You can use sys.all_objects in place of sys.objects too.

About The Author

Madhivanan,an MSc computer Science graduate from Chennai-India, works as a works as a Lead Subject Matter Expert at a company that simplifies BIG data. He started his career as a developer working with Visual Basic 6.0, SQL Server 2000 and Crystal Report 8. As years went by, he started working more on writing queries in SQL Server. He now has good level of knowledge in SQLServer, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL as well. He is also one of the leading posters at www.sqlteam.com and a moderator at www.sql-server-performance.com. His T-sql blog is at http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan