Audit Logging and External Notification

Audit Logging is the process of monitoring and recording activity for a table in CGI Advantage. Audit logging is normally used to:

  • Monitor and gather data about activity on a given table.

  • Investigate suspicious activity.

You can monitor the following actions for a table:

  • Insert

  • Update

  • Delete

Note: Audit logging cannot be performed on transactions.

External Notification allows logging of event notifications for tables and transactions for use by external systems. Appropriate integration software and third-party external systems need to be installed and configured to use these event notifications.

When Audit Logging is set up for a table, all activity for this table, such as deletes, updates and inserts that are performed either online or through background jobs, is monitored and logged. When a user updates a table online, the User Id is logged as the user who performed the action. In case of updates through a background job, the Job Id for the job is logged instead of the User Id for the user who performed the action.

For example, when audit logging is setup for the table R_VEND_CUST, if user “jsmith” performs updates to this table online, the User Id “jsmith” is logged as the user who performed the action. When “jsmith” schedules a background job with Job Id 4056 that updates R_VEND_CUST, 4056 is logged as the user who performed the action.

The following information is logged when audit logging is enabled:

  • Date and time of the action

  • User Id or job Id that performed the action

  • Name of the job that performed the action (the job name is always Online if the action was performed online)

  • Action that was performed

  • Primary key of the record on which the action was performed

  • Snapshot of the data before the action was performed and a snapshot of the data after the action was performed

  • When External Notification is enabled for a Table or Transaction, then similar information is logged into Audit log and the External Notification flag on the Audit Log record is turned on.

Refer to the following topics for required setup:

  • Initialization File Settings

  • Setup Audit Log and External Notification

Refer to the “Audit Reporting” topic for information on viewing logging information.