At least here the TIMESTAMP is actually time-related. With Sybase and MS-SQL a "timestamp" column is just an 8 byte binary value that bears no relation to the time or date, and it does get updated every time you modify the table.

It is actually quite useful when using optimistic locking - you fetch the value of the timestamp along with your other columns, let the user make edits, and then before committing the edits you verify that the timestamp value is unchanged, thus guaranteeing that no one else has modified the row while the user was making the changes.

Michael