what is the difference between opened by and created by on incident

[Abdul Khan4]

what is the difference between opened by and created by on incident or Request tables

[Jon Barnes]

created by holds a string of the user_name that created it, where opened by is a reference to the user table that created. Opened by is useful for dot-walking to the user fields, etc.

[Abdul Khan4]

Thanks for the reply Jon,

I can easily add user_name by dot walking. So what is need of extra field

created by on table?

[Jon Barnes · Accepted solution]

Created by is added on pretty much all tables and ismeant to be more of a record of who created it, but if a user gets deleted later, the created by field will still show a record of which user created it. Also sometimes you will see guest or system filled into that field. So there are still many important uses of the created by column. But if you want a direct reference to the user record, use opened by.

[Abdul Khan4]

Thank you. That field is helpful when user record get deleted or updated