Posts tagged journaling
Do it yourself Transaction Recorder – when standard auditing is not available
0In the recently published blog article Database Transaction Recorder – Adding Who to When and What to make Flashback take over from Journalling tables (http://technology.amis.nl/blog/10911/database-transaction-recorder-adding-who-to-when-and-what-to-make-flashback-take-over-from-journalling-tables) I have discussed how the replacement in database oriented applications of journaling tables by flashback data archives can be completed by recording the transaction history – including the client identifier identifiying the real end user behind a transaction – using the standard auditing features of the Oracle Database.
This same article discusses how there may be situations where standard auditing is not an option to implement – for example because of prohibitive DBA regulations or the [perceived] complexity of managing the contents of the sys.aud$ table. In such circumstances, other alternatives can be considered. Note that these are inferior: they are more complex in terms of code, require more effort and introduce more run time overhead. However, they too will do the job and may be more appropriatefor a particular situation.
Database Transaction Recorder – Adding Who to When and What to make Flashback take over from Journalling tables
2In previous articles, I have suggested that the arrival of the Flashback Data Archive in Oracle RDBMS 11g allowed us to finally say goodbye to journalling tables. Keeping track of all changes and previous states of our records in our own dedicated tables is no longer required, was my statement (for example in http://technology.amis.nl/blog/2453/oracle-11g-total-recall-flashback-in-the-hands-of-database-designers-and-application-developers-at-last-and-the-end-of-journalling-tables). Not only would using Flashback Data Archives require less programming, it improves performance for DML operations substantially and also provides a lot of functionality at our fingertips, as Flashback Queries easily incorporate historical records in straightforward SQL queries and using dbms_flashback we can even turn back time and regard all data as it was back then, using the same application and all the same queries.
In the not too distant past, Flashback knew quite a long list of limitations that made it almost impossible to make any changes to a table definition and still retain the historical data. With recent improvements in 11gR2, most of these limitations have been removed and DDL such as More >
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