Version tracking records changes made to elements and their relationships in Operations Center. These changes include addition and deletion of elements, changes to element properties, and changes in element relationships. The types of actions that are recorded are add or create, change, and delete or remove. The information recorded for each action is:
Who made the change (the user)
When was the change made (date and time)
Description applicable to the type of change made (for example, the old value if a property is changed)
Version tracking data is stored in the same database as other configuration information for Operations Center. Only specific types and versions of databases can be used for version tracking. By default, version tracking is off and must be turned on for data to be recorded. For more information on configuring version tracking, see Section 2.0, Configuring Version Tracking.
There are three ways to look at version tracking data:
Change-by-change for a specific element
Comparison of an element from one point in time to another point in time
Comparison of one element to other elements
Each change generates a change event that is categorized as a historical alarm in Operations Center, so you can view each change as alarm data. Similar to other historical alarms, you can monitor the changes in the Alarms view in the console or in the alarms portlet in the dashaboard, and you can create reports by using alarms tables in Operations Center SQL Views. For more information, see Section 3.0, Changing Event Alarms.
Many changes can occur to an element over time. A comparison takes the starting time and shows the last changes made to the element and its children before a specific end time. In other words, it compares elements from an end point in time to an initial baseline. For more information on this type of comparison, see Section 4.0, Creating Time Comparisons.
Single or multiple elements, including children, can be compared to each other. This comparison shows the property and relationship differences between the elements. For more information, see Section 5.0, Creating Element Comparisons.
Version tracking can be used to monitor business-critical applications, and to create change logs, audit trails, and compliance reports. For more information, see Section 6.0, Examples.