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Comment by talesmm14

11 hours ago

I've worked at companies where soft delete was implemented everywhere, even in irrelevant internal systems... I think it's a cultural thing! I still remember a college professor scolding me on an extension project because I hadn't implemented soft delete... in his words, "In the business world, data is never deleted!!"

6 comments

talesmm14

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salomonk_mur  10 hours ago

But... It's true. Deleting data completely is an easy way to gimp and lobotomize your future analysis.

Storage is cheap. Never delete data.

  • ziml77  10 hours ago

    I prefer audit tables. Soft deletes don't capture updates, audit tables do (you could make every update a delete and insert in a soft delete table, but that adds a lot of bloat to the table)

  • yxhuvud  6 hours ago

    Deleting data is also a very easy way to not get GDPR compliance issues. Data is a cost and a risk, and should be minimised to what is actually relevant. Storage is the least part of the cost.

  • sfn42  2 hours ago

    Depends on the data in question. Some data is worth keeping, other data isn't.