title: Last modification date for a live SQL Server 2005 database
body: <p>Is there a way to know when the last write operation has occurred in a live SQL Server 2005 database?</p>
  
  <p>I currently have 30 (and growing) databases on my server. Only some of these see daily activity (but which ones get daily activity varies over time.) My backup space is limited and I'd like to do a daily backup of all "modified since last backup" databases.</p>
  
  <p>In fact, I'm asking the reverse of <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/486685/find-out-the-last-write-date-in-a-sql-server-database">this</a> question. Instead of asking last write date from a backup to see if I should restore it, I want to tell last write date of a live database to see if I should back it up.</p>
  
  <p>Since the backups run on the server itself, I could check the last modification time of the log, but that isn't very clean, nor I'm sure is totally reliable.</p>