What, When and who? Auditing 101

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What, When and who? Auditing 101

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Roy Ernest

Posted Sunday, November 27, 2011 1:40 AM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item What, When and who? Auditing 101

-Roy

Post #1212174

SQLRNNR

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 9:40 AM

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Nice job Roy.

Jason AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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Post #1212599

andre.quitta

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 9:57 AM

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The article was thorough and straighforward.

I find the problem with ChangeTracking and ChangeDataCapture is that there is so much hardcoding going on. That means whenever you add or delete a column, it is another area that needs to be touched. Plus the queries are pretty unwieldly and verbose.

There is a need in my group to send out an email when anything changes among multiple tables. That would be a very long query, and pretty unwieldy.

I have a lot going on with dynamic SQL to do that, but there is a performance hit.

Post #1212615

ALZDBA

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 10:18 AM

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Great job, Roy.
It's been my pleasure to help out. Smooooth

Johan

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but keeping both feet on the ground won't get you anywhere w00t

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Post #1212626

bitbucket-25253

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 10:29 AM

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Nice article Roy ... now waiting for the follow up article ..

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Ron

Please help us, help you -before posting a question please read
Before posting a performance problem please read

Post #1212638

Roy Ernest

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 11:01 AM

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Thx everyone. It was fun writing this series. I need to finish the SQL Audit in the coming week so that I can send it to you guys for review before I submit. I have already submitted CDC and I am waiting for it to be reviewed.
Andre, What I saw in CT is that it is using the old Tran replication technology to get the job done. For instance, if you add a column you have to do so many things to get the CT to track the changes just like replication of SQL 2000.

-Roy

Post #1212663

Evil Kraig F

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 12:43 PM

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Roy, an excellent walkthrough on the mechanics of something I've basically avoided. You highlighted its difficulties and its uses quite well.

Thanks for the article.

- Craig Farrell

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Post #1212708

codebyo

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 2:54 PM

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Excelent article, Roy.

I'm thinking that one of the ideal business solutions to use CT is for database synchronization from mobile devices or off-site databases.

To help CT become more "auditable", maybe we could use the syntax:

WITH CHANGE_TRACKING_CONTEXT(@context)
--<INSERT or UPDATE command here>

and send some information about the username or changes inside the @context VARBINARY(128) column. Is there a limitation for using the CT context and would it also become a major pain to maintain like described in the article?

Change Tracking comes with all SQL Server editions so it's a great little feature to have at our disposal. Smile

Best regards,

Best regards,

Andre Guerreiro Neto

Database Analyst
http://www.softplan.com.br
MCITPx1/MCTSx2

Post #1212774

David In BC

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 3:45 PM

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I am not sure I agree with,

"Data auditing is the process of doing a profile check and assessing the quality of data, to find how accurate it is. This can be achieved by keeping track of all the data changes."

A couple of points:

- you can't always know that data is correct. If the data is based on mathematical formula, and you have the inputs, you can. But you can't tell that my mobile telephone number is correct, or my date of birth. At least not without external validation. Quality is abstract.

- auditing goes beyond changing data. Tracking the viewing of data, or the printing of data, is very important. Examples can include celebrities who are hospitalized - you want to know if 300 hospital workers are viewing the patients chart (and shouldn't be).

I like this definition better: "[a] systematic examination of information use, resources and flows, with a verification by reference to both people and existing documents, in order to establish the extent to which they are contributing to an organisation’s objectives"

But interesting article.

David

Post #1212789

codebyo

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 4:08 PM

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Just one small correction: ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION is not needed for Change Tracking but it's the probably the safer way to use it with.

Best regards,

Best regards,

Andre Guerreiro Neto

Database Analyst
http://www.softplan.com.br
MCITPx1/MCTSx2

Post #1212805

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