All 7 Change Data Capture (CDC) questions
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How do you enable Change Data Capture on a specific table, and what does that process actually create? How do you query the change data captured for a table to find out exactly what changed within a specific time range? How is Change Data Capture different from using triggers to track changes to a table? How do you disable Change Data Capture on a table or an entire database once it is no longer needed? How would you use Change Data Capture to build a near real time data synchronization pipeline between an operational database and a data warehouse? What are the performance and storage considerations to keep in mind before enabling Change Data Capture on a very high volume table?
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SQL Server › Change Data Capture (CDC)

What is Change Data Capture in SQL Server, and what problem does it solve?

Beginner

Answer

Change Data Capture, often called CDC, automatically records insert, update, and delete activity on a table into a separate set of change tables, letting other systems or processes easily identify exactly what data has changed since the last time they checked, without needing to compare entire tables manually.
EXEC sys.sp_cdc_enable_db;
EXEC sys.sp_cdc_enable_table
  @source_schema = 'dbo',
  @source_name = 'Orders',
  @role_name = NULL;
Real-world example A data warehouse team enables CDC on their orders table so their nightly synchronization process only needs to pull the handful of orders that actually changed that day, instead of reprocessing the entire orders table every single night.

Common follow-ups: What is the difference between CDC and Change Tracking?;Does enabling CDC require any changes to the application code that writes to the table?

Replication;Query Optimization & Plans
All 7 Change Data Capture (CDC) questions