One of my favorite features of SQL Server 2008 is Change Data Capture.  I’ve blogged about it and talked to many user groups about it.  One nagging detail about the feature is that it is only included in the Enterprise Edition.  I’ve spoken to a lot of users that are on Standard Edition and either don’t have the financial ability to move to Enterprise or can’t justify the cost difference for the particular feature.

I’m aiming to resolve that issue with a project I started out on CodePlex called StandardCDC.  This project will implement the conceptual working parts of Change Data Capture on a Standard Edition instance running either SQL Server 2005 or 2008.  Here is what you will get:

• The ability to track DML changes on any table in a database with the results written to a relational format in a separate schema. 
• The ability to configure which columns are tracked for a given table.
• The ability to store tracking data on a separate filegroup.
• Automated purge of tracking data (user configurable, defaulting to 12 hours).
• A DDL trigger to alert you of changes to tracked objects.
• Easy to use stored procedures that allow you to simply reference your table and have all implementation handled for you.

If you are currently on Standard Edition and want to try StandardCDC I would love to hear from you.  Tell me what you love, what you hate, and why you think I’m a moron (if necessary).  My only goal here is to share a little joy with the full SQL community.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your downloads!