Phil, you say
I include DBCC Log, and its offspring fn_dblog, where there seems to be no documented way of doing perfectly legitimate actions to maintain or audit your own data.
You don't consider triggers a documented way to audit your data? The problem with reading the tran log is that it changes every version and sometimes within versions, and it's not particularly easy to read at the best of times. Look at the companies that have written log reader tools. Not cheap and not many competitive products
Also, now in 2008 there are multiple ways to audit data - SQL Auditing, Change tracking and Change data capture.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability