SQLUNINTERRUPTED

During my customer visits and over other offline interactions I have had with customer, one thing which they have always complained about is the fact that Server Level auditing in not available for other editions of SQL Server, except for the Enterprise, Developer and Evaluation Edition.

Now there is good news. With SQL Server 2012, Server level Auditing is now available for all editions of SQL Server. Database level auditing still remains limited to Enterprise, Developer and Evaluation Editions.

In addition to extending the Server level auditing to all editions, there are have been certain enhancements to the Auditing options.

1. The logging is more resilient to failures. For example, if the target log is on a network share, and if the network connection fails, SQL Server audit would restart when the network connectivity is restored.
2. A new Fail_Operations option has been added to On_Failure clause. With this new operations the operations which invoke the Audit, would be failed if the Audit cannot be written to be log. As mentioned above, if the write failure condition is resolved, the operations would continue to work without problems.
3. A new MAX_Files options has been added to the Audits. Earlier either the no of log written were unlimited (limited by the max size option or the space on the destination directory) or the number of logs were regulated by the Max_Rollover_Files option. Now, we can define a limit on the maximum number of files to be created.
4. A new option Predicate Expression has been added to the Create Server Audit command. These predicate expressions are used to determine if the Audit needs to be invoked or not. The Predicate Expressions can be specified in a where clause in the Create Server Audit command.