Soft deletion probably isn't worth it
Views are a simple solution to this problem.  Pretty much all moderns RDBMSs support updatable views, so creating views over your tables with a simple WHERE deleted_at IS NULL solves the majority of the author&#x27;s problems, including (IIRC) foreign key issues, assuming the deletes are done appropriately.<p>I feel like a lot of developers underutilize the capabilities of the massively advanced database engines they code against. Sure, concerns about splitting logic between the DB and app layers are valid, but there are fairly well developed techniques for keeping DB and app states, logic and schemas aligned via migrations and partitioning and whatnot.