>Yes, and the programmer who doesn't recognize the difference between a row that can be deleted and one that shouldn't is a coder, not a programmer.

Making that determination isn't the role of the developer/programmer. Database practice managers make that determination - and set up the necessary logging (and making those logs accessible as required).



>I've had my share of grief with systems over the years and I've had more grief from failing to recognize deleted rows that shouldn't have been there than the reverse.
>
>I recently inherited a SQL Server system that had its origins in .dbf's.
>In order to preserve the .dbf DELETED() feature, the designer put a bit column in each row indicating that the row had been deleted.


There's nothing wrong with a DELFLAG. SQL Server systems use them (or, alternatively, use Change/Data/Capture functionality to capture deletes). It's all about how the database is managed. It sounds like you've run into some really hacked out systems.