AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF A RELATIONAL EVIDENCE ACCUMULATION MODEL AS A MEANS OF OBTAINING OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE OF AUDIT TRAILS IN AN ADVANCED INFORMATION SYSTEMS ENVIRONMENT

Accounting systems of large (Fortune 500) corporations typically are integrated within the framework of a modern information system. Members of both the internal and external auditing professions have expressed concern in obtaining objective evidence of the audit trail of accounting transactions as they are processed in this complex environment. The audit trail has vanished, or is no longer present in traditional form.;Audit theories and procedures were developed by the researcher to obtain audit evidence from the DBMS log tapes. First, audit trail requirements were established. Second, an investigation was conducted into the content and form of audit trails as they have evolved in modern information systems. Third, the concept of a logical audit trail was clearly distinguished from that of the physical audit trail residing on the DBMS log tapes. Fourth, a Relational Evidence Accumulation Model based on the concepts of relational calculus was developed to transform the physical audit trail to a logical form. Relational algebra was then used to join and disjoin multiple relations to form more meaningful relations specified by the auditor. Fifth, the procedures were applied in an actual audit environment. The result of the process was a detailed audit trail of the processing of transactions through an advanced information system.;Succinctly, the researcher recognized the DBMS log tapes as a potential source of audit evidence of the processing of transactions through a modern information system. Audit trails of the processing of accounting transactions through the information system were determined to be present, however in a non-traditional form. Theoretical and operational concepts, procedures, and techniques were developed to obtain objective evidence of audit trails in this complex environment.;One data resource not previously investigated by the auditing community is the Data Base Management System (DBMS) Log Tapes. Large information systems currently maintain a recorded history of the processing of transactions and changes to the data base on DBMS log tapes. These log tapes are integral to the design of modern information systems to facilitate recovery of the data base in the event of inadvertent destruction. They are typically retained for a period of one to four weeks and contain historical data such as: (1) Receipt of a transaction; (2) The initiation and termination of each application program; (3) All updates to the data base resulting from the processing of the application program; (4) All intermediate transactions passed to other application programs for subsequent processing.