I need to generate a report which shows subscriptions for a object for a specific period. The problem is the objects on which a subscription is taken can be removed. So if the object is removed then i cannot generate a report for it anymore, simply because it is not known in the database anymore.
My current solution would be to introduce a "deleted" tag/db column that indicates if a object was removed. This way i can create reports even for removed objects.
This works nicely, but when the reports get more complex you will get more objects/tables with the "deleted" column, which might become less manageable.
Other solution i thought about are:
- create reports when object is removed. Problem here is when new reports are introduced, new reports cannot be created from removed object.
- save removed data to another form/table/format. Problem here is that you might not have saved enough for future reports and it is a a lot more work.
Any ideas on this subject? Or maybe even other, better, solutions?