SQL 2008 Auditing: CDC Vs Apex SQL Audit

  • Guys,

    I trying to implement auditing for the sql server 2008 database. I have looked at Change data

    capture feature of SQL Server 2008 and like the ways it creates new cdc schema with the option

    of creating under different file group. However there are no reports run off the cdc tables

    that end user can run to get the audit information, ofcourse we can spend development hrs to

    write an SSRs report to run of this table and each time when a table or column is added the

    corresponding SSRS report has to be created or modified.

    I was looking at the audit tools available, I ran into Apex SQL Audit and noticed that the tool

    provides the report which is preset and does not require to reworked when a new table or column

    is added. However the from database standpoint the biggest issue is the tool created triggers on

    any table that you choose to audit and writes to the tables created by the tool. The tables

    are created on Primary file group, which can ofcourse be moved to different filegroup to avoid

    any performance bottlenecks to disk IO.

    Has anyone used CDC and/or Apex SQL, can you please share your experiences and provide

    inputs/suggestions

    Thanks

  • Here is my take CDC based on my understanding is to allow you to get changed data through insert,update and deletes,the only way to do that in 2005 and below is limited through timestamp and trigger. So I am not sure how to compares it to auditing tools because audit is just one of the uses of CDC. But I could be wrong because I think ETL as the first use of CDC.

    http://blogs.msdn.com/manisblog/archive/2008/03/30/sql-server-2008-change-data-capture-part-i.aspx

    Kind regards,
    Gift Peddie

  • Our auditing team uses imperva to audit SQL Servers.

    The only thing I don't like about some of these auditing tools is that they use profiler trace to capture audit details. The traces are pretty heavy from what I have seen. Supposedly SQL 2008 auditing/CDC causes less load from what I have read...

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