We had to use auditing. It was a demand that came from our security group. We had no choice.

The ability to track activity including the SQL statements is definitely valuable. I really like how the database is laid out. It's straightforward. I can query the back-end tables. I've made a few of my own email alerts based on the data and the tables. It's accessible. That's very important.

Also, one of the things that comes with SQL Server is SQL Server Profiler. We use IDERA SQL Compliance Manager in that same manner to trace activity, and it does a good job of storing. Profiler is okay but it doesn't really store it in one shot like Idera does.

We've used the before and after, mainly because we are interested to see what an app is doing. Sometimes we have an app and we don't understand its behavior. We use the before and after data to see "Okay, this is what it is doing, this is what it is changing things to."

The independent view of elevated access and elevated instructions sent to our SQL are very valuable because they act as a secondary pair of eyes.

It's cheaper than other applications I researched and it has the auditing capabilities needed for SOX compliance.

The auditing feature is the most important, and then, of course, we use some of the reports.