Re: Reading ORACLE Re-do logs

In article <14SEP93.12938658.0223_at_UNBVM1.CSD.UNB.CA> "Andrew Jones (lrpr_at_unb.ca)" <LRPR_at_UNB.CA> writes:
> Does anyone know if there's a way to generate a report or file
>from the re-do logs for an ORACLE V6 database?
> We'd like to be able to have a
>record of what was done when, and by what user. It appears that
>ORACLE auditing only says what operation was done when and by whom,
>but not the data content of the insert/delete/replace. The CASE
> [...]
> That information must be in the re-do log, and I'd expected that
>ORACLE (like INGRES) would be able to report the content to me using
>a vendor-supplied utility; but no such luck. Now I'm looking for
>someone's homegrown solution, or a commercial product.

About a year ago I had a problem with some clown generating a ton of redo logs in a development environment. Since there where about 50 users on I figured the best way of finding the offending party was to look at the redos directly.

I just ran a c program to search for our user id pattern and write the summary to a file. I got about a million matches and found the person I though was the problem.

Since this turned out to be so useful, I called Oracle and asked for the structure of the redo log so I could get more information out of it.

After MUCH grief the answer came back that there is NO user information stored in the redo logs and that ALL it contains is changed data and block/byte offsets into the database.

The only reason I ever got a match from my program is that the person producing all those logs was changeing a group of tables that happens to have his USERID in it.

At best all you'll be able to do is figure out WHAT was changed not by WHO.

-- 
Regards, 

Lee E. Parsons                  		Baker Hughes Inteq, Inc
Oracle Database Administrator 			lparsons_at_exlog.com