How to Query the Audit Tables

Question

Our Production system is suffering performance issues which we attribute to the large volume of records in the audit tables. We want to implement an archival solution to alleviate this, which would involve transferring older audit records to a separate database. To achieve this, we need to write SQL queries against the <app>DATAAUDIT and <app>TASKAUDIT tables in the HFM database. We are aware that we need to join other tables to see descriptions, e.g. <app>SCENARIODESC. We have also deduced the translation of Activity Codes from "HFMAuditExtractSchemaDefs.xml", which accompanies the HFM Audit Extract Utility.
Unfortunately, there are some things which we do not know how to translate:
1) Period (lPeriod) on the <app>DATAAUDIT table, e.g. 67108869 but need to show "Jun" etc.
2) User (ActivityUserId) on the <app>TASKAUDIT table, e.g. -329543984
3) Module (strModuleName) on the <app>TASKAUDIT table, e.g. #@RID@#19
Can anyone advise how we should translate these pieces of data in order to give similar results to those seen on the Data Audit and Task Audit screens in Workspace?

Answer 1

1.) Period - I'm not sure where this is coming from, but I'm pretty confident it is not sitting in the database which I find odd. I want to find this as well, but haven't had any free time to search around, sorry.
2.) User - This one I can help you with.
--Get Task Item Data by Hour for a given day by user
select datepart(HOUR, cast(endtime-2 as smalldatetime)), count(activitycode) from <APP_NAME>_task_audit where activitycode in (1,4,6,8,9,12,14,15,16,21,23,44) and cast(endtime-2 as smalldatetime) between '2011-12-7 00:00:00' and '2011-12-7 23:59:59' and ActivityUserID in (select lUserID from HSV_ACTIVITY_USERS where sUserName = '<USER_NAME>') group by datepart(HOUR, cast(endtime-2 as smalldatetime))In the sample SQL Query above, I am looking for all of the task audit activity (for the specified tasks) for a specific user by hour. The part of the query you want to focus on is
and ActivityUserID in (select lUserID from HSV_ACTIVITY_USERS where sUserName = '<USER_NAME>')The ActivityUserID in the task audit table will match up to the lUserID field in the HSV_ACTIVITY_USERS table. sUserName will be the actual text username. Depending on how you are configured, the name may look like johndoe or johndoe@Native Directory or johndoe@AD, etc. If you query that table, you'll figure it out pretty quickly.
3.) Module ID. I can only partially assist on this one.
This is not also in the HFM database. I suspected it might be floating in workspace; however, can't really find it there either.
I can tell you a couple things though....
#@RID@# Is just a placeholder for Resource ID. The important part is the number behind it. If you do a search on your folders for @RID@, you'll get one hit where it is defined as a constant, but that is it. (I was hoping a file search would reveal a table of the ID's; however, I wasn't that lucky). There is probably a table of values that correspone somewhere, but I haven't found it.
If you do a distinct select, you'll see there's not too many ...
select distinct strmodulename from <APP_NAME>_task_audit#@RID@#10
#@RID@#13
#@RID@#14
#@RID@#16
#@RID@#18
#@RID@#23
#@RID@#30
#@RID@#32
#@RID@#4294967295
#@RID@#45
#@RID@#46
#@RID@#49
#@RID@#52
#@RID@#58
#@RID@#59
#@RID@#65
#@RID@#66
#@RID@#67
#@RID@#68
#@RID@#69
#@RID@#7
#@RID@#9
HyperionReports
How can you determine these values?
The quick and dirty way would be to run a Task Audit Extract for a given date range as this will reveal the Module Name.
Then execute a SQL Query on the Task Audit Table for the same data range. You could then match up the records and deduce the values.
--Get Task Items by Date Range
select (select sUserName from HSV_ACTIVITY_USERS where lUserID = ActivityUserID) as UserName, ActivityCode, ServerName, AppName, cast(StartTime-2 as smalldatetime), cast(EndTime-2 as smalldatetime), strDescription, strModuleName from <APP_NAME>_task_audit where cast(endtime-2 as smalldatetime) between '2011-12-7 00:00:00' and '2011-12-7 23:59:59' order by endtime ascOnce you determine the values, I would create a table in your database to hold them so that you could use them in future queries. I would also recommend you do the same with the activitycodes.