The lowdown on SQL Server auditing tools

The lowdown on SQL Server auditing tools

When Microsoft released SQL Server 2008, they introduced SQL Server Audit, which are comprehensive SQL Server auditing tools that address many of the limitations of auditing capabilities in earlier versions of SQL Server, when DBAs had to rely on SQL Trace and other tools. But SQL Server Audit is now native to SQL Server and, as such, is integrated into SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), providing a simple interface for implementing auditing at a fine-grained level so you can target specific objects, actions and principals.
SQL Server Audit tracks and logs events that occur in the database engine. It can record events at the server level or individual database level, although the latter is possible only in the SQL Server Enterprise and Developer editions. SQL Server Audit provides the SQL Server auditing tools necessary to set up, enable, store and view event data, and is fully manageable not only through SSMS but also T-SQL and Server Management Objects (SMO). Unlike SQL Trace, which is as much about performance monitoring as it is event tracking, SQL Server Audit focuses only on auditing in order to deliver the security, performance and manageability necessary to ensure comprehensive auditing.