Audit log viewer

Question

Hi to all
I'm newbie to SQL Server.
I'm trying to configure the server (Enterprise ver. 11) to track change regarding  insert/update/delete of records inside a simple single table.
I dont know exactly what and how the audit features of SQL Server write and track, but I need a table where I can read the changes on some table or some field of that tables.
I made some empirical temptatives.
I created the Audit Server (on Security of database instance). Then I created the "Server Audit Specification"...where I specified UPDATE as type, OBJECT...my table, and entity... my user that connect to database (For this temptative I'm using
a Access database linked/connected by ODBC. Work good because I see the changes made in Access, inside the SQL Management Studio).
than I activated the Audit Server... then activated Audit Specification (on my database schema).
I made some change on table... but I see empty the View Log Viewer.
I try to configure the audit server as file or as application. I don't know if the problem is there.
Could someone give me some basic/dummie suggestion?
thank you.
Daniele.b75

Answer 1

Hi,
Alternately, you can create a trigger to audit the table and then write certain information to another table. Here is a sample code.
create table demo
( c1 varchar(50)),
c2 varchar(50)),
go
create table audit_demo
old_c1 varchar(50)),
old_c2 varchar(50)),
audit_UserID varchar(50)),
audit_Timestamp datetime,
audit_action varchar(50))
go
create TRIGGER updDemo
ON demo
for UPDATE
as
if(UPDATE(c2))
begin
INSERT INTO audit_demo
(old_c1,
old_c2,
audit_UserID,
audit_Timestamp,
audit_action)
SELECT c1,c2,SUSER_SNAME(),GETDATE(),'update'
FROM deleted
end
insert into demo values('a','p')
insert into demo values('b','p')
insert into demo values('c','p')
insert into demo values('d','p')
demo for update trigger
select * from demo
select * from audit_demo
update demo set c2='ppp' where c1='b'
go
select * from demo
select * from audit_demo
Thanks.
Tracy Cai
TechNet Community Support