External logs collection and monitoring

From: JMBickham (JMBickham_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 11/29/04 

Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 17:33:05 -0800

Essentially I am looking for a way to externally store db
audit logs and to be able to parse the data or filter for specific events and
ids for review by a security team. Something less manual than copying trace
files from the server to another server and going over each using profiler
(we're talking about 30 servers here!)... but not necessarily as hands-off as
flagging and email alerting only.

In going through support docs and threads here a couple questions have also
arisen...

Does the table the trace dumps to have to be part of the local db? Is it
possible to have the trace dump to an external db server?

In order to have trace dump the output to a table, does this require setting
up a job using SQL Trace stored procedures or can it be done just by changing
the server's auditing configuration?