Triggers

In the business intelligence and data analytics world, the term ‘Triggers’ refers to special kinds of stored procedures – think of them as automatic scripts – that are set off, or ‘triggered’, by specific actions in a database, like adding or changing data. Imagine you’re playing a video game and every time you hit a certain button, it automatically makes your character jump. Database triggers work in a similar way; they jump into action in response to certain changes in the database.

Triggers are really useful for maintaining data integrity and managing complex business rules automatically. For example, if a company has a policy that no single discount can exceed 20%, a trigger could automatically check every new order’s discount and block those that try to break this rule. This way, mistakes or intentional rule-breaking can be caught and corrected right away, without a person having to watch over each transaction.

They also help with updating or maintaining audit logs. So, when data is modified, triggers can automatically create a record of who changed what and when, which is super important to keep things transparent and traceable. This automatic tracking helps businesses stay on top of their data, ensuring that they have reliable information for making decisions and can easily look back at the history of their data changes.