Incorrect data in Audit Trail: Direct updates on an audited attribute

Products

• Clarity PPM On Premise
• Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

The scenario is as below.

• An attribute has been included in the Audit Trail, from the application
• There is a process in the system that does direct updates to the column that corresponds to this attribute in the Database, via a Gel Script
• In the cmn_audits table, a new record is included after the update statement
• This new record however copies the created_by from the previous record in the cmn_audits table and writes it into the new record

Cause

Update queries running directly against an audited attribute's column.

Resolution

Note: Direct updates to Clarity PPM Data Model is not supported.

• When data is updated from the application through XOG or REST API, the account making the update is captured in the last_updated_by column
• This information is used by a trigger in the database to populate created_by column of cmn_audits table
• A direct update that only touches the column of the audited attribute, and does not make any change to the last_updated_by column, results in the account that had updated data previously, being incorrectly captured in cmn_audits table
• This might appear as if created_by has been picked up from the previous record of cmn_audits
• Whereas, in reality, this data would have been picked up from the table of the attribute. From the last_updated_by column.