SQL Server 2008 Question:

Automatic auditing is a true auditing solution for enterprise customers. STL Trace can be used for satisfying several auditing needs. SQL Server Auditing feature offers a number of advantages that attracts and help DBAs with much more easily achievable goals. These include meeting regulatory compliance requirements. These include –

Provision for centralized storage of audit logs and integration with system center
Better performance that is noticeable
Permits free-grained auditing in which an audit can be targeted for some specific actions by a principle against a particular object.
Allows the objects of audit to be treated as first class database objects, which mean Transact-SQL DDL statements can create these objects.
The database object is controlled by database engine’s permission model and enforcement control.
A new level permission is featured in SQL Audit – ALTER ANY SERVER AUDIT- which allows a principle to CREATE, ALTER and DROP an Audit Specification object.
A database level permission – ALTER ANY DATABASE AUDIT – is introduced to allow a principle to CREATE, ALTER and DROP a Database specification object..