Auditing Insert Update and Delete Operations

• suresh kartheek malladi

  SSC Enthusiast

  Points: 186

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  April 23, 2009 at 2:08 am

  #136813

  I would like to put in place a process into the current oltp databases to facilitate the retrieval of 1) new records inserted; 2) updated records; 3) deleted records (if any).

  I have an idea of using triggers to insert into an “audit” table the new, updated, deleted records with the appropriate timestamps on each. There is a caveat to this approach: I am not 100% certain what the previous developers used for retrieving identity. If they have not used the proper method ( i.e. @@Identity ), this can prove problematic to data integrity (e.g. wrong id’s used in a fk reference) especially if the audit tables have their own auto identity.

  I would like to know is there any other solution apart from using triggers to implement this so analyze the and propose a strategy to implement a solution.

• Jack Corbett

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  April 23, 2009 at 7:14 am

  #982849

  I have always used audit tables and triggers for this type of auditing. Yes, you could cause a problem if the application code is using @@Identity to return the latest identity value if you put an identity column in your audit table. If you don't know what was used I would suggest not using an identity value on the audit table. My audit table would add these columns to the columns in that source table:

  audit_action char(1) -- values would be I, U, D for insert, update, delete

  audit_date smalldatetime

  Then your unique/primary key would be source_id, audit_date, audit_action. Odds are the only joining you would do on the table will be on the source id you'd use that index for any join operations. You could cluster on audit_date, but I would think that a heap would be okay in this instance.

  Jack Corbett
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