How do you get a NOW() value in C# using the MySQL Connector?

Is it possible in an easy way to get the NOW() timestamp from an UPDATE query? I'm trying to save the "last开发者_开发问答updated" value in the local cache, or is there in any way possible to get the exact MySQL server time which the update query was executed?

Best Regards; Görgen

To my knowledge, MySQL doesn't have functionality like Oracle's RETURNING or SQL Server's OUTPUT clause to be able to save a query by returning values from INSERT/UPDATE statements. So that means two statements minimum...

is there in any way possible to get the exact MySQL server time which the update query was executed?

The best I can think of is to define an audit column (they were standard approach at my previous work) for logging the timestamp when the record was updated. In MySQL, you can default the value so on update it is set to the timestamp value at that time:

ALTER TABLE your_table 
  ADD COLUMN update_timestamp TIMESTAMP NOT NULL DEFAULT ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

...then this gives you a specific column value to query.

The usual way is to set a LastUpdated field in the database, either in the stored procedure or in a trigger. Then you can read it back.