Generating a log file of all data changes

[Forum Joe]

(I'm putting it here because I classify it as "exporting" data out of filemaker, but it's not really. I didn't know where else to put it).

I need to generate/export a log file of all changes made to any record in the database. IE, if a user changes anything, it gets noted in a log "At 12:05pm 01/04/2008, Username modified FieldName in record RecordName".

And the log-file just racks these up. The problem, obviously, is that it could get rather large, rather fast.

What is the best (most efficient) way of doing this? I've got a small-ish database at the moment, but needs to be able to scale to an enterprise-level if needed.

My thoughts are to have a global text field in one of the tables.

a) Any scripts that change the data would get modified to also add a line to the global text field.

: Any data that the user has direct access to would need to automatically run a script whenever a user modifies data, is this possible?

c) In order to stop the logfile getting too large in the global text-field, I would set up a script to purge it once a month to a text file. How can I get it to save this text file to the server?

Is it possible to not have the global text field at all, but have the server write lines to a text-file whenever it needs to? This would be less efficient, wouldn't it?

Suggestions? Comments? Anything I'm assuming that wouldn't work?

I would have thought this was a fairly common feature in databases, and there'd be documentation and/or forum posts on the issue already, but I can't find any.

[Fitch]

If you search this site for "audit" you'll find dozens of threads about this topic.

Now to answer some of your questions directly:

The "best" way? The fmDataGuard plugin might be it.

Can you run a script when data is modified? Yes, with a plugin such as zippScript.

How can you save a text file to the server? Probably many answers to that. Troi File plugin for example.

Take a look at the plugins I mentioned and have a look at this:

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos8/demo809.html

Good luck!

[mr_vodka]

Here is a link to some of the logging solutions that are out there that Tom mentioned.

Audit Trail Links

The easiest way, if you can budget for it, would be WorldSync's FMDataGuard plugin. It is great.