Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Bible

Part VIII. Monitoring and Auditing

IN THIS PART

• Chapter 53: Data Audit Triggers

• Chapter 54: Schema Audit Triggers

• Chapter 55: Performance Monitor

• Chapter 56: Tracing and Profiling

• Chapter 57: Wait States

• Chapter 58: Extended Events

• Chapter 59: Change Tracking

• Chapter 60: Change Data Capture

• Chapter 61: SQL Audit

• Chapter 62: Management Data Warehouse

Wow! SQL Server has seen an explosion of monitoring and auditing technologies. SQL Server 2000 and before offered these traditional monitoring technologies:

• Trace and Profiler

• System Monitor and Performance Monitor

• DML triggers and custom audit trails

• Wait states

SQL Server 2005 added:

• Dynamic management views

• DDL triggers (Logon triggers with SP2)

• Event notification

• SSMS reports

• Performance Dashboard (downloadable add-on)

SQL Server 2008 doubles the core monitoring technologies with the following:

• Extended events

• SQL Server auditing

• Change tracking

• Change Data Capture

• Management Data Warehouse

• Policy-Based Management (covered in Chapter 43)

If SQL Server is the box, then this part is about the many ways to be a SQL whisperer and listen to the box. The table on the following page clearly delineates the monitoring and auditing functions available in SQL Server.

Technology	Introduced	Events Tracked	Data Available	Performance
DML Triggers—fires T-SQL code on table events	Beginning of time	Instead Of or After Insert, Update, Delete, Merge	Inserted and deleted tables, all columns, all changes with user context	Synchronous within transaction; depending on width of table and amount ...