# Noticing db changes that don't happen in rails?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noticing-db-changes-that-dont-happen-in-rails/127406>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 28, 2008, 11:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noticing-db-changes-that-dont-happen-in-rails/127406 "2008-01-28T23:11:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ledelste](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@ledelste](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ledelste)\
**Post date:** [January 28, 2008, 11:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noticing-db-changes-that-dont-happen-in-rails/127406/1 "2008-01-28T23:11:22Z")

</div>

I am working on a rails application using MySQL as the database. The  
customer has a legacy application which can update records in the  
database. I want rails to know when this happens but things like  
callbacks or observers will not work because the updates are not  
happening in rails. I need rails to know because when these records  
change I need to tell some web services about them. The same thing  
applies I think if one used a MySQL gui to change some records, the  
web server would not know about the changes. The only thing I can  
think of doing is constantly running some ruby script that checks to  
see if the database has changed, but I really do not want to do any  
type of polling. I may be completely misinformed about how some of  
these things work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.