One of the great things about SQL Server is that the platform has grown to include a number of configuration options and switches that allow a DBA to get the most performance from their instance that is possible. One of the downsides of the platform, however, is that any sysadmin can make changes (or db_owner for database configuration) without an easy way to audit the changes. There is an entry in the error log, but parsing this data is neither easy, nor something that lends itself to easy alerting and reporting for DBAs.
This article explores how one might go