How to check if data has changed in database - sql-server

Question

In order to create a Dashboard I need to work on a database that I do not have information about. The data in the DataBase is updated through a particular management interface and I do not know where it is updated on the DB. Is there a way to check for data updates without the tables names or columns names?
Thanks

Answer 1

I agree that knowing nothing about the database will not get you very far, but you can get some information about table updates without knowing what you're looking for. Whether or not it's useful is a different question.
The included code leverages sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats to identify the last time a user update was performed on the table. This works for heaps as well as indexed tables and the user_update value includes inserts, deletes, and updates. The sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats view will include information only for tables that have been interacted. To work around that I UNION ALL with a second query to get the relevant object information for tables that aren't found in sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats. This gives a complete view of the table objects regardless of whether or not they've been used since the service started. You may not care about that at all and could strip it out.
Again, this may not be helpful, but your question was just "Is there a way to check for data updates without the tables names or columns names?" and the answer to that specific question is yes.
Caveats:
The user_update value is simply an incrementing counter of update actions. This will not let you know what the update was or how many updates have occured since X point in time, but it will let you know the last time a table was updated.
This information does not persist beyond a service restart, so if a table was updated right before a restart, you wouldn't know.
The provided script is database specific, meaning it only returns information about the datbase it runs in. You could use something like sp_MSforeachdb to run against everything though.
And the code...
SELECT * FROM
(
SELECT
##servername as servername
, DB_NAME(database_id) as DatabaseName
, u.object_id
, SchemaName = OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(u.object_id, database_Id)
, TableName = OBJECT_NAME(u.object_id, database_id)
, Writes = SUM(user_updates)
, LastUpdate = CASE WHEN MAX(u.last_user_update) IS NULL THEN CAST('17530101' AS DATETIME) ELSE MAX(u.last_user_update) END
FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats u
JOIN sys.indexes i
ON u.index_id = i.index_id
AND u.object_id = i.object_id
WHERE u.database_id = DB_ID()
GROUP BY database_id, u.object_id
UNION ALL
SELECT
##servername as servername
, DB_NAME() as DatabaseName
, o.object_id
, OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(o.object_id, db_id())
, object_name(o.object_id, db_id())
, 0
, CAST('17530101' AS DATETIME)
FROM sys.indexes i
JOIN sys.objects o ON i.object_id = o.object_id
WHERE o.type_desc in ('user_table')
and i.index_id NOT IN (select s.index_id from sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats s where s.object_id=i.object_id
and i.index_id=s.index_id and database_id = db_id(db_name()) )
) AS temp
ORDER BY writes DESC