In my case, it was necessary not only to show that a certain user ran a certain query at a certain time (as the trace would do), it was also necessary to show which records resulted, and the state of certain important columns at the time, hence the need for active logging from the select procedure. Also management wanted real-time info, and did not want to archive old info. Admittedly this was not a huge database, but effective normalization keeps the history table manageable.