Patent ID: 7246137

Claim:
An auditing method for capturing audit data from various applications in collaborative business processes spanning several enterprises not under common control such as sharing the same network or security regime, comprising establishing a central audit warehouse as a repository for audit data from the various applications associated with respective business processes comprising one or more commercial transactions each composed of a series of interrelated components created on applications in two or more of said independent enterprises, the corresponding audit data making up an audit trail for a series of events that transpired to carry out a given commercial transaction, predefining a standardized format and communication protocol for communicating audit data of various types associated with an application to the audit warehouse, extracting audit data at the application level in a native format different from said standardized format; converting the audit data in said native format to the corresponding standardized format for the type of audit data, transferring the audit data in the standardized format via an interface to the audit warehouse using the predefined communication protocol, sorting standardized audit data by the individual commercial transaction to which the audit data relates; and storing the sorted audit data at the audit warehouse according to the respective commercial transaction to which the audit data relates so that audit data relating to a given commercial transaction can subsequently be retrieved together to check for compliance with required procedures.