In the upcoming version of ApexSQL Audit 2017 R3 we will be adding some key new features
Dedicated before-after reports
After the initial ApexSQL Audit 2017 R1 release, which introduced report templates, and 7 compliance related out-of-the-box reports, the R3 release of ApexSQL Audit will bring additional improvements to reporting with at least 5 additional predefined out-of-the-box reports. This time, focus will be on before-after auditing reports that will be part of both main GUI and reporting application, and can be run immediately, or used as a starting point for custom reports.
Scheduler for exporting reports and data collection
Another feature that allows better agility when working with auditing reports is available from the ApexSQL Audit 2017 R3 release, and that is a scheduler for exporting reports and data collection. Users can automate report creation tasks to run on a regular basis or schedule unattended creation of specific reports per determined schedule. All predefined out-of-the-box reports, as well as the user’s created custom reports will be accessible in the scheduler for automatic, unattended report generation.
Extended Events based auditing
All previous versions of ApexSQL Audit use SQL traces to capture auditing data and database triggers to perform before-after auditing. ApexSQL Audit 2017 R3 version allows users to choose which exact method they will use to audit their SQL Server instances and introduces SQL Servers extended events to audit events on the audited SQL Server. This means that users that want to audit SQL Server 2012 version and better will be able to opt for either trace-based auditing or extended events-based auditing, and choose the best auditing method based on the specific of their auditing environment. For users of SQL Server 2017, there will be application continuity even though SQL profiling is deprecated, in this version
AlwaysOn cluster support
While previous versions of ApexSQL Audit could be used to audit nodes that belong to the AlwaysOn cluster environment as separate SQL Server instances, ApexSQL Audit 2017 R3 deals with all nodes included in the AlwaysOn cluster as clusters integral parts and allows auditing at the cluster level based on the AlwaysOn cluster listener. This enables users to setup auditing on the global cluster level instead for each node separately, and enables users to use only a single ApexSQL Audit license for the whole Availability group, instead of licensing each node as a separate SQL Server instance
For more information on upcoming releases of ApexSQL Audit, please visit our Roadmap or What’s next section.
April 26, 2017
