Soft deletion probably isn't worth it

Re:Soft deletion probably isn't worth it by makeitdouble on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @07:41PM (#32159425)

> unless there's some reason not to.

Yes.

To note, with GDPR there's now legal reasons to do so regarding user personal data. That can be the moment the devs realize they actually can't delete the data, because they soft deleted for so long, many relations are now interlocked and the data model needs to be changed to give a starting point to the deletion cascade.

My lesson from that was to at least have one test deleting a mock user that spans the maximum data breadth of the service . We caught a bunch of these loops in test at dev time and that was pretty great.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Soft deletion probably isn't worth it by JohnBooty on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @08:40PM (#32159853)

    My lesson from that was to at least have one test 
    deleting a mock user that spans the maximum data 
    breadth of the service . We caught a bunch of these 
    loops in test at dev time and that was pretty great.

Thank you. That is SUPER insightful. If it wasn't too late to edit my initial post I would add this.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Soft deletion probably isn't worth it by Falkon1313 on Thursday July 21, 2022 @08:36PM (#32187067)

Good point. That could be tricky when it crosses the boundaries of schema changes and data migrations.

[ Parent | on HN ]