We get this daily data feed. (We have no control over the original data, so asking them to correct the database isn't an option.)

The customer records contain addresses in the US. Street address, City, State and Zip.

On our end, we use the data in a database for the marketing department. They sometimes find the address is incorrect, or incomplete, and want to make changes to it. But of course, the next data feed would come in and wipe out their corrections.

Is there a method inf MySQL to protect certain fields from being changes, kind of like a protected cell in a spreadsheet. This is some of the field names of the MySQL record layout:

> 
> address1  
>  address2  
>  address3  
>  city  
>  state  
>  zipcode  
> 
> 
> 
> 

What if I created along side of this, additional fields that are flagged either "Y" or "N" as being a protected field:

> 
> address1  
>  address1\_flag  
>  address2  
>  address2\_flag  
> 
>  address3  
>  address3\_flag  
>  city  
>  city\_flag  
>  state  
> 
>  state\_flag  
>  zipcode  
>  zipcode\_flag  
> 
> 
> 
> 

So when the marketing department corrects, for example, the zipcode, it would set the zipcode\_flag to "Y" meaning, Yes protect the field zipcode from further changes. If the original data feed does get corrected at a later point, then if zipcode from the marketing department's database matches the original field, then the zipcode\_flag protection would be changed to "N".

Does this sound like the correct method to manage the marketing department's database from the daily feed? Or is there another approach or feature available in MySQL to do this? Thanks!