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Introducing HindSight 2005
HindSight 2005 is a database history add-on for Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The system captures database operations--inserts, updates, and deletes--as they occur, writing a complete audit trail to an alternate history database.
Other audit trail solutions focus on showing "who changed what, when". HindSight 2005 provides this data, of course, but takes the solution a step further. Instead of simply displaying a list of all database events, HindSight 2005 provides an interface for querying data in time.
Once historical records have accumulated, the history database can be queried using standard T-SQL syntax and an additional field that specifies a date and time in the past. Using this powerful feature, you can view the exact state of a database at any time in the past, without restoring backups or changing the state of the database itself.
HindSight 2005 can even be configured to record the application user rather than the database user. Custom user identification is especially useful when auditing a web application that connects to SQL Server using a single account.
HindSight Snapshots
HindSight 2005 can present a historical view for any standard T-SQL statement. For example, the following T-SQL statement produces a list of employees in the Northwind database:
SELECT * FROM Northwind..Employees
Using HindSight 2005, a similar statement produces a list of employees at an exact point in time:
SELECT * FROM _Northwind.._Employees ('09/12/2003 10:49:00 AM')
Inserts, deletes, or updates that occurred after the specified time are ignored by the snapshot.
HindSight 2005 snapshots are implemented using inline functions. So you can open Query Analyzer and view the results of a snapshot directly, create a view combining several snapshots, or retrieve a snapshot via ODBC or ADO.NET. With HindSight 2005, you don't need an external tool to get to your historical data.
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Best of all, HindSight 2005 supports your most complex T-SQL statements. Snapshots can provide a historical view of complex joins, aggregations, and nested subqueries. You can even join two snapshots from different points in time to track changes to your data.
Applications
HindSight 2005 was written to provide many of the data warehousing capabilities of larger custom systems without the need for any modifications to your existing databases or SQL Server configuration. HindSight 2005 can be implemented on the most complex database schema for immediate historical data preservation.
Audit Trail. Need to know who changed what, when? HindSight 2005 provides a full audit trail of database operations. You can specify the server objects you want to audit, purge the historical records periodically, even view a report of which server objects are being updated most often.
21 CFR Compliance. HindSight 2005 can help you meet governmental record-keeping requirements such as the FDA's standard for archiving and auditing electronic records.
Quality Assurance and Testing. With the powerful Rollback feature, you can return a table, database, or even an entire server to its state at a prior point in time. Rollback can simplify repetitive testing tasks by quickly restoring a baseline set of data.
Other Features
HindSight 2005 includes many additional features for managing and monitoring the database history system.