I have a MySQL database and an automation script which modifies the data inside once a day. And these columns may have changed by an user manually. What is the best approach to make the system only update the automated data, not the manually edited ones? I mean yes, flagging the cell which is manually edited is one way to do it, but I want to know if there's another way to accomplish this? Just curiosity.BTW, the question is about cell values, not rows.
User input and automated input separation
programming practices;database design;methodology;automation
I would put two DateTime columns in those tables, one called lastUserEdit and the other one called lastAutomatedEdit.  That way, you always know whether the last edit on each row was done by a user or automatically by simply comparing these two dates.