[pif]

> I think we largely need support for "soft deletes" to be baked into SQL

I think web and GUI programmers must stop expeting the database to contain the data already selected and formatted for their nice page.

[KronisLV]

> I think web and GUI programmers must stop expeting the database to contain the data already selected and formatted for their nice page.

So a widespread, common and valid practice shouldn't be made better supported and instead should rely on awkward hacks like "deleted_at" where sooner or later people or ORMs will forget about those semantics and will select the wrong thing? I don't think I agree. I also don't think that it has much to do with how or where you represent the data. Temporal tables already do something similar, just with slightly different semantics.

[lazide]

What way of making it better supported wouldn’t require custom semantics that people would forget and then select the wrong thing.