Soft Deletes Preserve Ambiguity Too

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Adding deleted_at to a table answers one question: when was this row marked as deleted?

It does not answer whether the row was safe to mark, who should still see it, whether its credentials remain valid, whether it still occupies a unique business slot, how it can be restored, or when its data should be erased.

A retained cart cleanup could not safely reduce those questions to one nullable timestamp. Old carts might still have a shipment, a payment session, a booking attempt, or item work which had crossed a meaningful boundary. The eventual policy archives a deliberately narrow set and preserves the aggregate as evidence.

Lifecycle on Brian Faust

Soft Deletes Preserve Ambiguity Too