Whats the SQL Server TIMESTAMP equivalent in Oracle?

Question

In the program I have, I depend on the SQL Server TIMESTAMP data type to tell me if a row's "content" has changed. What's the way to find out if a row's content has changed in Oracle (preferably without having to add a extra column for this in a table) ?

Answer 1

Assuming that you are using a moderately recent version of Oracle, ORA_ROWSCN is the psecudocolumn you're after. That provides a conservative upper bound of the System Change Number (SCN) at which your row was modified. By default, this is only traced at the block level, but if you build the table with ROWDEPENDENCIES enabled, it will be tracked at the row level.