Where to create application logs from?

[Andy B]

I need to create application logs where everything that is done is logged to
some sort of storage space (sql, xml, or whatever). The log would be used to
track activities in the admin control pannel of the website. Examples would
be Adding, editing and deleting news, events, signing in/out and so on.
Should I be doing this at the sql server level or should I be doing this at
the application level. I have an sql error log in the database (at the
database level) that requires a person to actually log into the server to
see the errors logged into the table. Should I consider making this
available in the application as well?

 

[Joern Schou-Rode]

Should I be doing this at the sql server level or should I be doing this
at the application level.

It really depends on what you a trying to solve. If you need to log only
database activity you will propably want to do some research on Sql Server
auditing, and you should be able to find some "automagic" way of logging
everything in the database:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sql-server+auditing

If you, on the other hand, want some more specilized logging scheme where
you explicitly define what to be logged and when to log it, it might be
better to implement the logging at the application side. Have a look at
the libraries "log4net" and "nlog" if you want to do application side
logging.