It seems I was blind to the fact that auditing is ambiguous, and seems to be interpreted in the context of verification (as in an audit by a quality insurance body, or similar). In the context of audited dependencies it means recording in order to produce a bill of material, itself as a basis for:

• avoiding to repeat operations already performed and the results of which may be shared, and of
• propagating information of use upstream, i.e. from the consumer to the provider (from the dependant to depended).

-- MarcGirod - 09 Feb 2005

The recording is called an audit trail. An audit is still some kind of verification of the recordings (audit trails) that are left behind by the operations on the CM system.

An audit may be an automatic process that passed the audit result informations upstream automatically. Passing information may be considered as recording but it should not be considered as auditing.

Also, sharing information with (or without) the intent of avoiding regenerating the information should not be considered auditing.

-- FrankSchophuizen - 10 Feb 2005

Sorry Frank, this terminology is well established, as part of Base ClearCase, so there are two interpretations but the one you promote is spurious in the current context. I appreciate to get feed-back and opportunities for discussion, but couldn't you express these opinions of yours in a different style than in this thread-like way, which conflicts with my attempts to create a network of pages focused each on a precise topic?

-- MarcGirod - 14 Feb 2005