Question

I am writing a trigger to audit updates and deletes in tables. I am using SQL Server 2008

My questions are,

Is there a way to find out what action is being taken on a record without going through the selection phase of the deleted and inserted tables?

Another question is, if the record is being deleted, how do I record within the audit table the user that is performing the delete. (NOTE: the user connected to the database is a general connection string with a set user, I need the user who is logged into either a web app or a windows app)

Please help?

Answer 1

For part one, you can either set up separate triggers or have one trigger that checks the special tables INSERTED and DELETED to discriminate between updates and deletes.

For part two, there’s no way around it in this case, you’re going to have to get that username to the database somehow via your web/windows app. Unfortunately you can’t communicate with the trigger itself, and with a generic connection string the DB doesn’t have any idea who it’s dealing with.

I’ve found that it can be helpful to add a “LastModifiedBy” column to the tables that you plan to audit so that you can store that info on the original tables themselves. Then your trigger just copies that info into the audit table. This is also nice because if you only need to know who the last person to touch something was you don’t have to look in the audit table at all, just check that one column.