Re: audit trail - would this work?

[David E. Jones]

-David


On Mar 29, 2007, at 12:54 PM, Christopher Snow wrote:

If I understand you right, this sort of thing has been discussed before, and wouldn't be terribly complicated to implement as an extension to the Entity Engine, but it can introduce a huge amount of overhead for the app server and database (if there are very many fields to do this with). What you'd basically be doing is keeping a revision history of a set of fields across various entities. A few thoughts from past meanderings of the mind: 1. use generic data structures to keep track of general revision histories for fields; would probably need something to support all of the common different field types (could use a single less than 255 character string, maybe some other simplifications) 2. do something to track together sets of fields that are changed at the same time, at least the fields in the same entity and perhaps even those across an entire transaction 3. do something to track who made the change (harder since the entity engine doesn't require user information to be passed down, and it's not always available), and when the change is made (pretty easy, we do it all the time already) Once all of this is in place all you'd have to do is set some sort of track-revisions="true" attribute on each field definition you want tracked. Is this something you are interested in developing, or sponsoring the development of?

Would this work?



<entity ...>
  <field ...><audittrail/></field>
  ...
</entity>



<entity name="auditIdNe" ...>
  <field name="beforeValue" type="id-ne".../>
  <field name="afterValue type="id-ne" .../>
</entity>
<entity name="auditIdVlong" ...>
  <field name="beforeValue" type="id-vlong".../>
  <field name="afterValue type="id-vlong" .../>
</entity>
<entity name=...  repeat for all the data types

Any ideas/feedback?

Thanks in advance ...


On 29 Mar 2007, at 09:29, Christopher Snow wrote:

Add an optional element (or attribute) to entity field elements called audittrail. The presence of the audittrail element tells the entity engine that you wish to record changes to the field in an audittrail table. Separate entities could be created representing each field type, so the entity engine could record the changes to the field in a field of the same type:

No response - have I said something wrong?  I would really appreciate
some direction on an approach to keeping audit trails ...

Thanks in advance.

Chris

On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 05:10 +0100, Christopher Snow wrote:

On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 21:49 -0600, David E. Jones wrote:

On Mar 26, 2007, at 9:26 PM, Christopher Snow wrote:

Does anyone using ofbiz keep audit trails?

Audit trails of what? Keep in mind the requirements vary from data

structures (or more detail if you'd like) do you have in mind?

element to data element... so which of the hundreds of top level data

The requirements for audit trails are specific to each business (except financial transactions where audit trail requirements are stipulated by

law, accounting stds, etc).


the logging and provides screens to view the audit log.


kind of ofbiz pattern to point me in the right direction.

CA Clarity allows the system administrator to configure audit trails to meet the business requirements by allowing the admin to simply choose which entity attributes should be logged. The application takes care of My specific need is to to implement some form of audit trail in a risk management application I'm developing. What I was hoping for is some

Is ofbiz used in SOX environments?

Good question... I know there are various publicly traded companies
that use OFBiz, but I don't think any of them are using it for
accounting and such. Still for the accounting and general framework
level stuff in OFBiz, I would suspect that it should comply quite

or replaced by the time a real review is done by a publicly traded


Are you saying that you are doing an accounting, inventory

and need to do a SOX audit? If so I'd guess you have a fair budget
for it, so I can't wait to see more!

well with Sarbanes Oxley. Of course, those laws may be repealed and/ company that needs to AND all changes required go back into OFBiz... management, etc implementation of OFBiz for a publicly traded company

The reason for mentioning SOX is because it is the main driver of

the customer.

customer requirements for audit trails when configuring CA Clarity for

Is this the only way?:

The only way to... ?

implementing audit trails?

Is the process below (email from Anil to you) the recommended way for

-David

Anil,

You could do this there, that should work fine. I wouldn't use a
toString()
and equals() for comparison, I would just use the equals() method
on the

interface
which is used for finding out =, !=, >, >=, <, <=, etc.

Later,
-David Jones

-----Original Message-----
From: Anil K Patel [mailto:toanilpatel at hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 1:13 AM
To: jonesde at ofbiz.org
Cc: ofbiz-entity-dev at lists.sourceforge.net

Tables


David,
What if I modify the "set(String name, Object value, boolean
setIfNull)"
in GenericEntity class such that It compares the new value to the
Old value,
changes the fieds map only if required. If at all you think this
is OK to
do, Then I need  help in Logic to compare the values of field.
Will calling ToString on values and then comparing be OK?
Regards
Anil




---- Original Message -----
From: "David E. Jones" <jonesde at ofbiz.org>
To: "Anil K Patel" <anilpatel72 at netscape.net>;
<ofbiz-entity-dev at lists.sourceforge.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 11:35 PM

in Tables

classes. For general knowledge you should check out the Comparable Subject: Re: [OFBiz-Entity-Dev] Keep Audit trail of Change of Data in Subject: RE: [OFBiz-Entity-Dev] Keep Audit trail of Change of Data

Anil,

There is nothing in the Entity Engine to do this automatically,
but I
suppose it could be done. You mean you want to log EVERY change
of EVERY
field? That could be a lot of data. There are many variations on
this that

away

have varying impacts, it really depends on how little you can get

with.

If you get the most recent stuff from CVS there is an original
values map

this

that is needed for full auto cache clearing and can be useful for

type

of application as well.

Later,
-David Jones




-----Original Message-----
From: ofbiz-entity-dev-admin at lists.sourceforge.net

[mailto:ofbiz-entity-dev-admin at lists.sourceforge.net]On Behalf

Of Anil K
Patel
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 12:03 AM
To: ofbiz-entity-dev at lists.sourceforge.net
Cc: jonesde at ofbiz.org

Tables


I am using Entity Engine.
Major Issue
I have a requirement to keep Audit of Change of Data in Tables
(columns).

Subject: [OFBiz-Entity-Dev] Keep Audit trail of Change of Data in

If

somebody has experiance doing something similar or has Idea on
how we can

do

it.

Sub Issue
On an existing Entity If I run findByPrimeryKey and get the
GenericValue

the
attributes and set value for each property in a GenericValue
Object. Is

object, now If I set a propertyname/value map or Loop through all there a way for me to know if the new value set for a property was

different

then Old value for the property.

Regards
Anil K Patel

On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 16:09 +0100, Christopher Snow wrote:

Is there a preferred way of setting up an audit trail of changes to

entity data in ofbiz?

Thanks in advance ...

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