If the client is making ad-hoc ALTER TABLE statements on important databases/tables then they probably do want auditing even if they don't know it yet. It is the job of the consultant (which is what I am assuming LanX is in this case) to persuade the client that this is indeed what they want. Plenty of arguments: DR, intrusion detection, the initial use case of this thread, etc.

Thanks.

I'm often confronted with monks who always worked in the same work environment with long established (cargo) cults and don't understand the usual problems a consultant is facing after seeing a dozen of clients.

Those clients normally call you far to late when the trouble becomes apparent but without being able to understand the underlying problems . They want more hands not brains.

It's hard work to explain to them that what used to "work" for a decade doesn't scale well (like in a much bigger team).

That's especially hard, if you are hired as a Perl Dev and not as a DBA, architect or even manager and don't have the clout to change things.

Nevertheless a well chosen tool which fits into established work patterns can do wonders and help changing these patterns gradually.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

You don't need a plugin to run alter table on production servers.

And it would only be manually triggered ....

...like if a difference to a "master" table is reported.

Ideally...