I am trying to find a highly efficient method of auditing changes to data in a table. Currently I am using a trigger that looks at the INSERTED and DELETED tables to see what rows have changed and inserts these changes into an Audit table.
The problem is this is proving to be very inefficient (obviously!). It's possible that with 3 thousand rows inserted into the database at one time (which wouldn't be unusual) that 215000 rows would have to be inserted in total to audit these rows.
What is a reasonable way to audit all this data without it taking a long time to insert in to the database? It needs to be fast!
Thanks.
A correctly written trigger should be fast enough.
You could also look at Change Data Capture
Auditing in SQL Server 2008
I quite often use AutoAudit:
AutoAudit is a SQL Server (2005, 2008, 2012) Code-Gen utility that creates
Audit Trail Triggers with:
Created, CreatedBy, Modified, ModifiedBy, and RowVersion (incrementing
INT) columns to table
Insert event logged to Audit table
Updates old and new values logged to Audit table Delete logs all
final values to the Audit table
view to reconstruct deleted rows
UDF to reconstruct Row History
Schema Audit Trigger to track schema changes
Re-code-gens triggers when Alter Table changes the table
Update: (Original edit was rejected, but I'm re-adding it):
A major upgrade to version 3.20 was released in November 2013 with these added features:
Handles tables with up to 5 PK columns
Performance improvements up to 90% faster than version 2.00
Improved historical data retrieval UDF
Handles column/table names that need quotename [ ]
Archival process to keep the live Audit tables smaller/faster but retain the older data in archive AutoAudit tables
As others already mentioned - you can use Change Data Capture, Change Tracking, and Audit features in SQL Server, but to keep it simple and use one solution to track all SQL Server activities including these DML operations I suggest trying ApexSQL Comply. You can disable all other, and leave DML auditing option only
It uses a centralized repository for captured information on multiple SQL Server instances and their databases.
It would be best to read this article first, and then decide on using this tool:
http://solutioncenter.apexsql.com/methods-for-auditing-sql-server-data-changes-part-9-the-apexsql-solution/
SQL Server Notifications on insert update delete table change
SqlTableDependency C# componenet provides the low-level implementation to receive database notification creating SQL Server Queue and Service Broker.
Have a look at http://www.sqltabledependency.it/
For any record change, SqlTableDependency's event handler will get a notification containing modified table record values as well as DML - insert, update, delete - change executed on your database table.
You could allow the table to be self auditing by adding additional columns, for example:
For an INSERT - this is a new record and it's existence in the table is the audit itself.
With a DELETE - you can add columns like IsDeleted BIT \ DeletingUserID INT \ DeletingTimestamp DATETIME to your table.
With an UPDATE you add columns like IsLatestVersion BIT \ ParentRecordID INT to track version changes.
Related
I have a need to audit changes where triggers are not performing well enough to use. In the audit I need to know exactly who made the change based on a column named LastModifiedBy (gathered at login and used in inserts and updates). We use a single SQL account to access the database so I cant use that to tie it to a user.
Scenario: Now we are researching the SQL transaction Log to determine what has changed. Table has a LastUpdatedBy column we used with trigger solution. With previous solution I had before and after transaction data so I could tell if the user making the change was the same user or a new user.
Problem: While looking at tools like DBForge Transaction Log and ApexSQL Audit I cant seem to find a solution that works. I can see the Update command but I can't tell if all the fields actually changed (Just because SQL says to update a field does not mean it actually changed value). ApexSQL Audit does have a before and after capability but if the LastUpdatedBy field does not change then I don't know what the original value is.
Trigger problem: Large data updates and inserts are crushing performance because of the triggers. I am gathering before and after data in the triggers so I can tell exactly what changed. But this volume of data is taking a 2 second update of 1000 rows and making it last longer than 3 minutes.
How do I create a trigger in Microsoft SQL server to keep a track of all deleted data of any table existing in the database into a single audit table? I do not want to write trigger for each and every table in the database. There will only be once single audit table which keeps a track of all the deleted data of any table.
For example:
If a data is deleted from a person table, get all the data of that person table and store it in an XML format in an audit table
Please check my solution that I tried to describe at SQL Server Log Tool for Capturing Data Changes
The solution is build on creating trigger on selected tables dynamically to capture data changes (after insert, update, delete) and store those in a general table.
Then a job executes periodically and parses data captured and stored in this general table. After data is parsed it will be easier for humans to understand and see easily which table field is changed and its old and new values
I hope this proposed solution helps you for your own solution,
I'm using SQL 2008 and have DELETE, UPDATE & INSERT auditing enabled on table XYZ. It works great other than when I query the data:
SELECT * FROM fn_get_audit_file('H:\SQLAudits\*', default, default)
It doesn't actually show me what was deleted or inserted or updated, only that a deletion, etc ... occurred. The statement column of the above query shows this snippet:
delete [dbo].[XYZ] where ([Name] = #0)
I want it to show me what the value of #0 is. Is there a way of doing this?
From what I've found about it, SQL Server 2008's "auditing" feature is very lacking. It does not act as a traditional data audit trail, where you store a new row every time something changes (via Triggers), with complete information such as the user who made the change. It more or less just tells you something has changed without much detail. I really wish SQL Server would include full data audit trail features.
Reference
While Creating Database Audit Specification, you select operation for the Audit Action Type INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE
This result in showing us logs , saying Select or Insert or Update or Delete...But the individual value can never be seen
Example - Click here to view the Logs for Insert/Update/Delete
The SQL Server Audit tool is very powerful, however, it was never designed to record data changes (eg. col1 was changed from 'fred' to 'santa' in table 'dummy' in db 'test' by 'sa').
For this you will need Change Data Capture (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb522489.aspx).
Cheers,
Mark
You can monitor the delete sentences using SQL Server Profiler. You will be able to see the changes.
Another way to monitor is using the CDC (Change Data Capture) feature in SQL Server. This feature will let you monitor changes in the tables.
Finally, there are other tools related like ApexSQL Trigger.
I am building a sales database. One of the tables has to be a hierarchy of sales reps and their assigned territories. Ohese reps and their territories change every day, and I need to keep track of what exactly that table looks like every day. I will need to take snapshots of the table daily.
I would like to know what I have to do or how I have to store the data in the table, to be able to know exactly what the data in the table was at a certain point in time.
Is this possible?
Please keep in mind that the table will not be more than one megabyte or so.
I suggest using Paul Nielsen's AutoAudit:
AutoAudit is a SQL Server (2005, 2008) Code-Gen utility that creates
Audit Trail Triggers with:
Created, CreatedBy, Modified, ModifiedBy, and RowVersion (incrementing INT) columns to table
Insert event logged to Audit table
Updates old and new values logged to Audit table
Delete logs all final values to the Audit table
view to reconstruct deleted rows
UDF to reconstruct Row History
Schema Audit Trigger to track schema changes
Re-code-gens triggers when Alter Table changes the table
His original blog post: CodeGen to Create Fixed Audit Trail Triggers
Before you implement in production suggest you restore a backup of your database into development and work on that.
This is for MS SQL.
Seeing as the table is so small, you are best of to use the Snapshot functionality provided by MS SQL.
To make a snapshot of a database:
CREATE DATABASE YourDB_Snapshot_DateStamp ON
( NAME = YourDB_Data, FILENAME =
'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Data\YourDB_Snapshot_DateStamp.ss' )
AS SNAPSHOT OF YourDB;
GO
See this page for reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175876.aspx
You can make as many snapshots as you want. So my advice is to create a script or task that creates a daily snapshot and appends the date to the snapshot name. This way you will have all your snapshots visible on your server.
Important to note: Snapshots are read only.
One simple method I've used in the past is basically just creating a second table whose structure mirrors the one I want to audit, and then create an update/delete trigger on the main table. Before a record is updated/deleted, the current state is saved to the audit table via the trigger.
While effective, the data in the audit table is not the most useful or simple to report off of. I'm wondering if anyone has a better method for auditing data changes?
There shouldn't be too many updates of these records, but it is highly sensitive information, so it is important to the customer that all changes are audited and easily reported on.
How much writing vs. reading of this table(s) do you expect?
I've used a single audit table, with columns for Table, Column, OldValue, NewValue, User, and ChangeDateTime - generic enough to work with any other changes in the DB, and while a LOT of data got written to that table, reports on that data were sparse enough that they could be run at low-use periods of the day.
Added:
If the amount of data vs. reporting is a concern, the audit table could be replicated to a read-only database server, allowing you to run reports whenever necessary without bogging down the master server from doing their work.
We are using two table design for this.
One table is holding data about transaction (database, table name, schema, column, application that triggered transaction, host name for login that started transaction, date, number of affected rows and couple more).
Second table is only used to store data changes so that we can undo changes if needed and report on old/new values.
Another option is to use a third party tool for this such as ApexSQL Audit or Change Data Capture feature in SQL Server.
I have found these two links useful:
Using CLR and single audit table.
Creating a generic audit trigger with SQL 2005 CLR
Using triggers and separate audit table for each table being audited.
How do I audit changes to SQL Server data?
Are there any built-in audit packages? Oracle has a nice package, which will even send audit changes off to a separate server outside the access of any bad guy who is modifying the SQL.
Their example is awesome... it shows how to alert on anybody modifying the audit tables.
OmniAudit might be a good solution for you need. I've never used it before because I'm quite happy writing my own audit routines, but it sounds good.
I use the approach described by Greg in his answer and populate the audit table with a stored procedure called from the table triggers.