Within an update row level trigger how can I detect which field[s] has been effected by an update ? As I'm not concerned with the OLD field name values, comparisons against them are not important. I'm guessing its a simple operation, but for the moment the solution escapes me! I've tried checking for null and empty string but the new.modified_by value is always the old.modified_by. This leads me to think I'm not understanding the trigger logic correctly! Does an update ALWAYS change EVERY field even if not every field is specified in the SQL update statement. Here is the logic I'm trying to implement within my trigger function. IF ( new.modified_by IS NULL ) THEN /* if an update occurs and the modified_by field is empty then use the default value of 1 */ mod_by = 1; ELSE mod_by = new.modified_by; END IF; Example1: update my_table set modified_by=343, title='example1' where group_id = 10; /* what I want to happen in this case is mod_by to be set to 343 */ Example2: update my_table set title='example2' where group_id = 10; /* what I want to happen in this case is mod_by to be set to 1 */ I hope this is explained well enough to allow for some help If anybody can help I'd really appreciate it. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs/FAQ.html