I recently came across the Mysql TIMESTAMP field type.  I’ve seen this datatype for years, however have never really used it – until now.  I’ve been looking for a way to set a fields value to the current date/time by default.  You can’t do this with DATETIME field types in mysql, however you can do it with TIMESTAMP fields:

CREATE TABLE Person_Example(
   Person_Name VARCHAR(256),
   CreateDate TIMESTAMP NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);

More information is available from the mysql manual.