CDC - Change Data Capture SQL Server 2008

Very Nice Feature.
Myonly concern were what happened with distributed transaction

Also Does any body knows any such feature in Oracle?

Yes, it is an exiciting feature.
My concern is about the security trace: is it possibile to trace the current user application name ?
Normally we connect application to SQL using a unique trusted connection (windows authentication), but we are interested to log all db changes along with the current logged (application) user; otherwise we know the db changes but not who made them.

MaurizioR wrote:

Yes, it is an exiciting feature.
My concern is about the security trace: is it possibile to trace the current user application name ?

Normally we connect application to SQL using a unique trusted connection (windows authentication), but we are interested to log all db changes along with the current logged (application) user; otherwise we know the db changes but not who made them.

With triggers we would do this by getting the user_name from sql and we could insert it into the audit tables. This works well as long as you have a two tier application with each user having thier own connection.

With 3-Tier or web apps you are unable to use the user_name since you are probably using a single user id or connection pooling. So, what we would do is add a field or fields to each table that the application would populate on each insert/update. This way the audit data could capture who made the change. For delete I guess you would have to get creative like not allowing record deletes and just setting a delete flag... or you could update the record with all blank/null values prior to deleting it.

I would assume that you could do a similar thing with CDC?

BOb

Hi,
We already implement a similar mechanism inside our product: for each table, dedicated fields are in charge to store the InserUserName and LastUpdatedUser. We can extend them, adding the DeletedUserName column.

Anyway it is not acceptable to implement a logical delete for us, while it is possible to think to a solution that updates the DeletedUserName before physically deleting the record.

Alternatively, an elegant solution could be:
SQL Server stores a dedicated variable inside the CDC table, i.e. CDCUserName.
By default, CDCUserName contains the connection user name (SQL auth or Win auth), so the console changes are logged too.

At runtime, the application should be able to assign CDCUserName with the current application user for that specific session only. The mechanism should be compatible with connection pooling.

Regards,

Maurizio

see also CDC helper - a GUI for enabling CDC and seeing changes
http://www.codeplex.com/CDCHelper

How do we use CDC for related tables such as a master and detail where master having the PK and some basic details such as created by created on etc and the details having the entity specific attributes?
How do I retrieve the CDC data for a single record modification by joining the master and details CDC tables?
Please suggest.

wisdomforce DatabaseSync has a feature for transactional audit when source is Oracle and destination could be SQL Server. The destination table can have a columns with previous data and new value along with transaction date and all other details about this transaction
oracle "change data capture" for auditing.  http://www.wisdomforce.com/products-DatabaseSync.html
It is a log base CDC replication

Virtually every project that I've worked on has required full audit tracking as most of them are ecommerce or financial projects.  Using an IsDeleted flag is the easiest and overall best way to go.  Adding the field to an existing site and fully implementing it should take no more than a couple days.  If it takes longer than that, you are doing something wrong.  For tables that allow changes, we add the following fields at the end of the table:

[LastChangeBy] uniqueidentifier
[LastChangeDate] datetime
[IsDeleted] bit

For tables that do not allow changes (i.e. Payments), we add the following fields at the end of the table:

[CreatedBy] uniqueidentifier
[CreatedDate] datetime

This way we always know exactly who made what change, and when.

Hi,

It would be nice to know how you would apply this to a real world scenario. Is this used only for auditing? 

If every change is captured, and updates are captured twice, it may lead to huge change tables over a relatively short time. 

 

Karim

Hey I have sql 2005 and I have created triggers and table CDC to capture the data. everything functions good and the data is being updated in the _CDC tables. all i need to do now is to generate the updated data as a report - what should I do ......?
i need to show only the updated columns
when user selects the date periods and the person name - i need to display any updated info about that person during that period.
 
thanks