Tracking Database Action History tables

[ummaria]

Hello,

I have posted a question related to this problem before but I never got the full understanding of the concept. I would really appreciate if someone could help me, my deadline for the design of the project is in 2 days and I'm still having doubts :(

The system I'm developing is a VB/ASP.NET web application connected to a MS SQL Server Express.

The requirement is to be able to view a report that shows actions performed on all the tables in the database.

For example, I have an Item table. Whenever an Item is inserted in the table, in the report, I want the user to be able to see the user Id of the person who added the Item + action + date time.

I have many other tables such as Department, Transaction, Item Type which also I want to keep track of the actions performed on them.

I know that I have to add a History table that will store all this, but the question is, should I add a table for each entity (Department History, Transaction History, Item Type History) ?

I've read this article on how to approach this problem using Triggers:

http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/091901-1.shtml#postadlink

But I'm still not sure of the number of tables that should be added.

Please help :)
Thanks