Before I delve into the abyss of Microsoft documentation any deeper, I'd like to know if someone experienced with Change Data Capture and Change Tracking know if one or both of these can be used to replace the traditional ...
"Audit trail table copy of the 'real
table' (all of the fields of the original table,
plus date/time, user ID, and DML
action field) inserted into by
Triggers"
... setup for a database table audit trail, where the trigger populates the audit trail table (which is all manual work).
The MSDN overview documentation explains at a high level what Change Data Capture and Change Tracking are, but it isn't clear enough to me, and doesn't state outright, that these tools can be used to replace the traditional audit trail tables we've made so often.
Can someone with any experience using Change Data Capture and Change Tracking save me a lot of time, or confirm that I am spending time looking at the right tool? The critical part of our audit trail is capturing all changes to a table's fields (on INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE), when it happened, and who did it. These changes are commonly provided to an end user chronologically via an audit trail report. Which is another question ... Change Data Capture or Change Tracking is the solution, I'd assume that this data can be queried just like data from a normal table?
EDIT: I need a permanent audit trail, irregardless of time. I see that Change Data Capture has to do with the transaction logs, so this sounds finite to me.
