Best way to implement an audit trail in SQL Server?

Question

I don\'t know if these requirements are standard or not but I\'m wondering is there a solution out there which can do the following:

• For a specified set of tab

Answer 1

I create trigger which does it for XML this way we can log all tables to same table, making it more flexible

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[AuditAll] (
    AuditId    int           NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1),
    [DateTime] datetime      NOT NULL,
    TableName  nvarchar(255) NOT NULL,
    AuditEntry xml           NULL,

    CONSTRAINT [PK_AuditAll] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( AuditId ASC )
)

I needed only 'old' values, so I store deleted table only, inserted table can be seen in the table anyhow.

CREATE TRIGGER AuditSimple 
    ON Simple
    AFTER INSERT,DELETE,UPDATE
AS 
BEGIN
-- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from
-- interfering with SELECT statements.
SET NOCOUNT ON;

IF (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM deleted) > 0 
begin
    Declare @AuditMessage XML
    --set valut to all xml from deleted table
    set @AuditMessage = (select * from deleted for xml auto) 

    insert into AuditAll( DateTime, TableName, AuditEntry ) 
        values ( GetDate(), 'Simple', @AuditMessage )
end

END
GO

I guess this could easily be called in sp_foreach to create it for each table in datatabase but we did not needed it at the moment, just remember to change your table names

cheers