A few months ago I was one of a number of Database Professionals who were asked by Redgate to provide feedback about a new product that they were developing called SQL Lighthouse. SQL Lighthouse is used to monitor Database Drift, I must admit a term that confused me a little when I was first told about the product but once it was explained it made perfect sense.
SQL Lighthouse monitors changes within a database, for example if the code in a stored procedure changes the DBA would receive an alert informing them that somebody had changed the stored procedure. It would show the stored procedure code before it was modified and what it looks like after the change was made, it will show who made the change and when the change was made.
I think this product is great for monitoring changes to a SQL environment particularly if you work for an organisation that has a team of DBA’s who could all be making changes to different SQL instances within a SQL Environment at the same time. SQL Lighthouse would ensure that all DBA’s within the team were aware of the changes that were being made. It also allows DBA’s to monitor any changes Developers maybe making to the SQL environment. In my case it highlighted that some developers had permissions to make changes that they should now have been able to do.
This was a product that I found really useful. I will write some more in-depth blog posts about SQL Lighthouse soon. SQL Lighthouse is now available as a Beta release and can be downloaded here. Take a look and see if it would benefit your organisation.
Shaun
shaunatkinson.com 
Hey Shaun,
I notice you are on the redgate site as a recommender of sql lighthouse (or dlm dashboard), out of interest, do you actually use it and does it help find changes that have been made to your databases without you knowing about it?
What is it that you like about it, I am just trying to figure out what it is I don’t get about it!
ed
LikeLike
Hi Ed,
I do use DLM Dashboard, It does track changes in databases that you may not know about. I think it’s most useful for DBA’s because the dashboard allows them to see the code that developers are changing. If as a DBA you think that the code could be done in a more efficient way, then once you see it in the dashboard you can go and have a chat to the developer and say I think it might be better if you do what you are trying to do this way. Equally you may see things and think they shouldn’t be doing that, for me it’s a great alerting mechanism about code that is going onto my servers.
LikeLike