title: With a created by timestamp, is it better to have the DB manage it, or the application?
body: <p>We have your bog standard Java app under development, and a lot of the records we're creating (Hibernate entities in MySQL) have 'created' and 'modified' timestamps on them.</p>
  
  <p>Now, me and one of the developers disagree - I believe that both of those fields should have a MySQL default of CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, and then the modified can be changed by the app. He wants both managed by the app.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a compelling reason for either decision? I can't see why you'd want to add more explicit steps to the code, unless for some reason you were concerned about your servers (db, application) having inconsistent timestamps.</p>