Are there any tools that provide a common interface to logs?

We are developing audit software for software we did not develop. The other software can use any of a variety of databases; it can use either Pervasive, SQL Server, DB2 or Oracle and possibly others. We are researching solutions so I don't need details, but I assume we can have a high-level portion that processes the application's data and a lower-level portion that is unique to each of the database systems. Are there any samples or other tools of doing something such as that?

The logs are primarily used for backup purposes, but they also are used for auditing, correct? I know that SQL Server and DB2 have that capability and I assume that Oracle does too. I will check to ensure that Pervasive does.

I would try to search for previous answers about common interfaces, but the question is so general that I don't know what to search for.

I'm trying to get a handle on just what you want, so this might just be babbling... If you are looking for tools that can build reports against those databases, there are many tools that can do that.

One tool that is generally despised by DBAs, but happens to work well in all of those environments is Crystal Reports. You can do reasonably sophisticated reporting (for example, there are complete SAS-70 audit packages that are done with Crystal Reports and a few custom DLLs that provide specialized functions).

My personal choice is generally the Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Service. This provides a dynamite tool for sever hosted reporting that makes reports easy to develop, easy to deploy (via web, email, pdf, etc), and easy to manage (if a report needs to be changed, you can quickly make a change for every report generated by any user from that point onward).

If you are looking for something completely different, please try to explain and I'll gleefully ramble on on some other topic!

-PatP

Thank you Pat for helping me to clarify what I am asking. Your suggestions sound useful, but they are different from what I need. I was not even thinking of reporting tools such as those, but perhaps they could help us with some research and analysis for the project. Unfortunately I am not supposed to provide details of the project.

What I need is a programmer's interface that processes the data. I primarily program in C++ but we might use VB or C#. Crystal Reports might work but it is not designed to be used the way we need. I am not sure how to describe what we need except to say that we don't need report output; we need database output (or CSV or XML or something like that) that is a common format that can be further processed. Perhaps we can use Crystal Reports if there are not any more direct solutions. As I have indicated, Crystal Reports might be good for prototyping purposes.

Does that help explain what I am trying to ask? How would you describe it?

Note that I have used Crystal Reports and in the past (in another life) I have written many reports using COBOL. Crystal Reports is great for what it is designed to be used for but when it is used for things it is not designed for it's resources can be frustrating compared to C++.