1. An auditing method for capturing audit data from various applications in collaborative business processes spanning potentially more than one distinct enterprise, comprising establishing a central audit warehouse as a repository for audit data from the various applications associated with respective business processes, 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, and storing the received audit data at the audit warehouse according to its association with the respective business processes so that audit data relating to a given business process can be retrieved together to check for compliance with required procedures.