MySQL request: getting the date of last update of a database

[WebDrake]

I'm just beginning to learn PHP and MySQL programming. I was wondering: is there a way to request from a database, not data contained in it but the date/time of its last update?

Of course, it's possible to create an automatically-generated field which records the date that each entry was made (so you can identify the most recent), but supposing that isn't available .... ?

Thanks in advance for any replies.