Implementing Fine-grained audit trail

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rberg

Hello,

I was wondering if you could give me some advice on implementing a fine-grained audit trail. By fine-grained I mean auditing when content is viewed, modified, etc.. and when and by whom (a little more functionality than the auditable aspect can provide)

Right now, I am focusing on auditing when content is viewed. I am planning on implementing a pointcut advisor that intercepts the getReader method on the Content Service, and then creating the appropriate audit trail entry.  I am fairly confident that this approach is solid, however if you disagree please let me know.

Where I am really looking for advice is how to actually store the audit trail data. I can not decide whether I should:

A) go to the trouble of creating an audit table, and implementing all of the hibernate DAO layer

- or -

if I should just somehow store the audit trail as a node(s), and utilize the Alfresco framework that is already in place.


Right now I am leaning towards option A, but I would like to further explore option B.

If I were to use option B, does the following architecture seem sound?:

Define a new type (subtype of sys:base): auditTrailItem

auditTrailItem has the following attributes: auditEvent, timestamp, authority

In the auditable aspect, define a one-to-many association with type auditTrailItem.

Then each time an auditable event occurs, a new auditTrailItem would be created, and associated with the content with the auditable aspect.

Phew…Any comments would be greatly appreciated!!

-Ryan

rberg

Quick Addition:

In regards to:

I am planning on implementing a pointcut advisor that intercepts the getReader method on the Content Service, and then creating the appropriate audit trail entry. I am fairly confident that this approach is solid, however if you disagree please let me know.

I believe that another approach instead of intercepting the getReader method would be to implement a new Content Service Policy of onContentRead, and then bind a behaviour within the AuditableAspect to handle that.  Another decision….argh!