Consequences of disabling timestamps

[Hackatosh]

Issue Creation Checklist

[X] I have read the contribution guidelines

Issue Description

What was unclear/insufficient/not covered in the documentation

The consequences of disabling the timestamps (createdAt / updatedAt) are not very clear in the documentation : https://sequelize.org/docs/v6/core-concepts/model-basics/

If possible: Provide some suggestion on how we can enhance the docs

Make clear what is the impact of disabling the timestamps. Are they used internally by Sequelize for any purpose ? Or are we completely free to disable them ?

Additional context

Hello ! I have a use case where I need to track the last modification time of every row of a table, which can be modified through Sequelize and through SQL queries executed directly on the DB. I'd like to store this time in the updated_at column. In order for this time to be accurate, I'd like to disable Sequelize's automatic update on updated_at column and add a SQL trigger, but I am not sure of the impact of this action.

Also, if I use those parameters for the Model init :

{
  sequelize,
  timestamps: true,
  updatedAt: false
}

Will the column updated still be present but without the automatic update from Sequelize ? Or am I mistaken ?

[ephys]

createdAt and updatedAt are not used for anything by sequelize itself. It's safe to disable them, and add your own.

deletedAt is necessary if the model is paranoid

[Hackatosh]

Thank you very much for the quick answer ! 😄