IDERA SQL Compliance Manager 5.4 and later allow you to take advantage of the SQL Server Extended Events feature to track and archive specific events occurring in your monitored environment. SQL Server Extended Events is an event handling system that offers lower overhead and delivers performance gains over the default SQL trace method. In SQL Compliance Manager 5.4, only SELECT and DML events for SQL Server 2012 and later versions are supported by this feature. All functionality that works on top of these events, such as DML/Select filtering, Before-After data, sensitive column auditing, and more, work with this new method of capturing event data.
When Extended Events mode is enabled, events generate XEL files instead of trace files (.xel rather than .trc) but the files still are located in the Agent trace directory.
There are two ways to enable Extended Event capture:
- a stored procedure
- the Registered SQL Server Properties window Audited Activities tab in the Web console
Enable using stored procedures
To enable Extended Event mode using stored procedures, go to the location where the IDERA SQL Compliance Manager Console application is installed, and then execute the stored procedure
[dbo].[sp_enable_ExtendedEvents]
EXEC [dbo].[sp_enable_ExtendedEvents] <SERVER_NAME>,<YES/NO>
Enable using the Web Console
Users wanting to take advantage of SQL Server Extended Events auditing capabilities can do so on the Audited Activities tab of the Registered SQL Server Properties window by selecting Capture DML and SELECT activities using SQL Extended Events. For more information about enabling this feature using the Web Console, see Registered SQL Server Properties window - Audited Activities tab.