Verify an Oracle database rollback action is successful - oracle

How can I verify an Oracle database rollback action is successful? Can I use Number of rows in activity log and Number of rows in event log?

V$TRANSACTION does not contain historical information but it does contain information about all active transactions. In practice this is often enough to quickly and easily monitor rollbacks and estimate when they will complete.
Specifically the columns USED_UBLK and USED_UREC contain the number of UNDO blocks and records remaining. USED_UREC is not always the same as the number of rows; sometimes the number is higher because it includes index entries and sometimes the number is lower because it groups inserts together.
During a long rollback those numbers will decrease until they hit 0. No rows in the table imply that the transactions successfully committed or rolled back. Below is a simple example.
create table table1(a number);
create index table1_idx on table1(a);
insert into table1 values(1);
insert into table1 values(1);
insert into table1 values(1);
select used_ublk, used_urec, ses_addr from v$transaction;
USED_UBLK USED_UREC SES_ADDR
--------- --------- --------
1 6 000007FF1C5A8EA0

Oracle LogMiner, which is part of Oracle Database, enables you to query online and archived redo log files through a SQL interface. Redo log files contain information about the history of activity on a database.
LogMiner Benefits
All changes made to user data or to the database dictionary are
recorded in the Oracle redo log files so that database recovery
operations can be performed.
Because LogMiner provides a well-defined, easy-to-use, and
comprehensive relational interface to redo log files, it can be used
as a powerful data audit tool, as well as a tool for sophisticated
data analysis. The following list describes some key capabilities of
LogMiner:
Pinpointing when a logical corruption to a database, such as errors
made at the application level, may have begun. These might include
errors such as those where the wrong rows were deleted because of
incorrect values in a WHERE clause, rows were updated with incorrect
values, the wrong index was dropped, and so forth. For example, a user
application could mistakenly update a database to give all employees
100 percent salary increases rather than 10 percent increases, or a
database administrator (DBA) could accidently delete a critical system
table. It is important to know exactly when an error was made so that
you know when to initiate time-based or change-based recovery. This
enables you to restore the database to the state it was in just before
corruption. See Querying V$LOGMNR_CONTENTS Based on Column Values
for details about how you can use LogMiner to accomplish this.
Determining what actions you would have to take to perform
fine-grained recovery at the transaction level. If you fully
understand and take into account existing dependencies, it may be
possible to perform a table-specific undo operation to return the
table to its original state. This is achieved by applying
table-specific reconstructed SQL statements that LogMiner provides in
the reverse order from which they were originally issued. See
Scenario 1: Using LogMiner to Track Changes Made by a Specific
User for an example.
Normally you would have to restore the table to its previous state,
and then apply an archived redo log file to roll it forward.
Performance tuning and capacity planning through trend analysis. You
can determine which tables get the most updates and inserts. That
information provides a historical perspective on disk access
statistics, which can be used for tuning purposes. See Scenario 2:
Using LogMiner to Calculate Table Access Statistics for an
example.
Performing postauditing. LogMiner can be used to track any data
manipulation language (DML) and data definition language (DDL)
statements executed on the database, the order in which they were
executed, and who executed them. (However, to use LogMiner for such a
purpose, you need to have an idea when the event occurred so that you
can specify the appropriate logs for analysis; otherwise you might
have to mine a large number of redo log files, which can take a long
time. Consider using LogMiner as a complementary activity to auditing
database use. See the Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for
information about database auditing.)
Enjoy.

Related

Dynamic Audit Trigger

I want to keep logs of all tables into 1 single log table. Suppose if any DML operation is going on any table inside DB. Than that should be logged in 1 single tables.
But there should be a dynamic trigger which will not hard coded the column names for every table.
Is there any solution for this.
Regards,
Somdutt Harihar
"Is there any solution for this"
No. This is not how databases work. Strongly enforced data structures is what they do, and that applies to audit tables just as much as transaction tables.
The reason is quite clear: the time you save not writing audit code specific to each transactional table is the time you will spend writing a query to retrieve the audit records. The difference is, when you're trying to get the audit records out you will have your boss standing over your shoulder demanding to know when you can tell them what happened to the payroll records last month. Or asking how long it will take you to produce that report for the regulators, are you trying to make the company look like a bunch of clowns? You get the picture. This is not where you want to be.
Also, the performance of a single table to store all the changes to all the tables in the database? That is going to be so slow, you have no idea.
The point is, we can generate the auditing code. It is easy to write some SQL which interrogates the data dictionary and produces DDL for the target tables and triggers to populate those tables.
In fact it gets even easier in 11.2.0.4 and later because we can use FLASHBACK DATA ARCHIVE (formerly Oracle Total Recall) to build and maintain such journalling functionality automatically, and query it automatically with the as of syntax. Find out more.
Okay, so technically there is a solution. You could have a trigger on each table which executes some dynamic PL/SQL to interrogate the data dictionary and assembles a piece of JSON which you stuff into your single table. The single table could be partitioned by day range and sub-partitioned by table name (assuming you have licensed the Partitioning option) to mitigate the performance of querying it.
But that is extremely complex. Running dynamic PL/SQL for every DML statement will have a bad effect on performance, which the users will notice. And this still doesn't solve the fundamental problem of retrieving the audit trail when you need it.
To audit DML actions on any table just enable such audit by using following code:
audit insert table, update table, delete table;
All actions with tables will then be logged to sys.dba_audit_object table.
Audit will only log timestamp, user, host and other params, not exact copies of new or old rows.

create plsql trigger for any DML operations performed in any tables

I have around 500 tables in DB. If there is any DML operations performed on that table then trigger should be fired to capture those dml activities and should load it into an audit table. I dont want to write 500 individual triggers. Any simple method to achieve this?
To switch all high level auditing of DML statements for all tables:
AUDIT INSERT TABLE, UPDATE TABLE, DELETE TABLE;
What objects we can manage depends on what privileges we have. Find out more.
AUDIT will write basic information to the audit trail. The destination depends on the value of the AUDIT_TRAIL parameter. If the parameter is set to db the output is written to a database table: we can see our trail in USER_AUDIT_TRAIL or (if we have the privilege) everything in DBA_AUDIT_TRAIL.
The audit trail is high level, which means it records that user FOX updated the EMP table but doesn't tell us which records or what the actual changes were. We can implement granular auditing by creating Fine-Grained Audit policies. This requires a lot more work on our part so we may decide not to enable it for all our tables. Find out more.
Triggers are used on tables only, not the entire database. Ignoring the complexity of maintaining disparate data types, data use, context of various tables and their use, what you are looking for would be extremely complex, something no RDBMS has addressed at the database level.
There is some information on triggers at this link:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/A57673_01/DOC/server/doc/SCN73/ch15.htm
You could place a trigger on each table that calls the same procedure ... but then all that complexity comes into play.

Oracle 11g Deleting large amount of data without generating archive logs

I need to delete a large amount of data from my database on a regular basis. The process generates huge volume of archive logs. We had a database crash at one point because there was no storage space available on archive destination. How can I avoid generation of logs while I delete data?
The data to be deleted is already marked as inactive in the database. Application code ignores inactive data. I do not need the ability to rollback the operation.
I cannot partition the data in such a way that inactive data falls in one partition that can be dropped. I have to delete the data with delete statements.
I can ask DBAs to set certain configuration at table level/schema level/tablespace level/server level if needed.
I am using Oracle 11g.
What proportion of the data on the table would be deleted, what volume? Are there any referential integrity constraints to manage or is this table childless?
Depending on the answers , you might consider:
"CREATE TABLE keep_data UNRECOVERABLE AS SELECT * FROM ... WHERE
[keep condition]"
Then drop the original table
Then rename keep_table to original table
Rebuild the indexes (again with unrecoverable to prevent redo),constraints etc.
The problem with this approach is it's a multi-step DDL, process, which you will have a job to make fault tolerant and reversible.
A safer option might be to use data-pump to:
Data-pump expdp to extract the "Keep" data
TRUNCATE the table
Data-pump impdp import of data from step 1, with direct-path
At this point I suggest you read the Oracle manual on Data Pump, particularly the section on Direct Path Loads to be sure this will work for you.
MY preferred option would be partitioning.
Of course, the best way would be TenG solution (CTAS, drop and rename table) but it seems it's impossible for you.
Your only problem is the amount of archive logs and database crash problem. In this case, maybe you could partition your delete statement (for example per 10.000 rows).
Something like:
declare
e number;
i number
begin
select count(*) from myTable where [delete condition];
f :=trunc(e/10000)+1;
for i in 1.. f
loop
delete from myTable where [delete condition] and rownum<=10000;
commit;
dbms_lock.sleep(600); -- purge old archive if it's possible
end loop;
end;
After this operation, you should reorganize your table which is surely fragmented.
Alter the table to set NOLOGGING, delete the rows, then turn logging back on.

How to check whether a delete has been occured in a table at specified time

Recently, a very strange scenario has been reported from one of of our sites.
Based on our fields, we found that there should be some kind of delete that must have happenend for that scenario
In our application code, there is no delete for that table itself. So we checked in gv$sqlarea(since we use RAC) table whether there are any delete sql for this table. We found nothing.
Then we tried to do the same kind of delete through our PL/SQL Developer. We are able to track all delete through gv$sqlarea or gv$session. But when we use below query, lock, edit and commit in plsql developer, there is no trace
select t.*, t.rowid
from <table>
Something which we are able to find is sys.mon_mods$ has the count of deletes. But it is not stored for a long time, so that we can trace by timestamp
Can anyone help me out to track this down
Oracle Version: 11.1.0.7.0
Type : RAC (5 instances)
gv$sqlarea just shows the SQL statements that are in the shared pool. If the statement is only executed once, depending on how large the shared pool and how many distinct SQL statements are executed, a statement might not be in the shared pool very long. I certainly wouldn't expect that a one-time statement would still be in the shared pool of a reasonably active system after a couple hours.
Assuming that you didn't enable auditing and that you don't have triggers that record deletes, is the system in ARCHIVELOG mode? Do you have the archived logs from the point in time where the row was deleted? If so, you could potentially use LogMiner to look through the archived logs to find the statement in question.

Can you using joins with direct path inserts?

I have tried to find examples but they are all simple with a single where clause. Here is the situation. I have a bunch of legacy data transferred from another database. I also have the "good" tables in that same database. I need to transfer (data-conversion) data from the legacy tables to thew tables. Because this is a different set of tables the data-conversion requires complex joins to put the old data into the new tables correctly.
So, old tables old data.
New tables must have the old data but it requires lots of joins to get that old data into the new tables correctly.
Can I use direct path with lots of joins like this? INSERT SELECT (lots of joins)
Does direct path apply to tables that are already on the same database (transfer between tables)? Is it only for loading tables from say a text file?
Thank you.
The query in your SELECT can be as complex as you'd like with a direct-path insert. The direct-path refers only to the destination table. It has nothing to do with the way that data is read or processed.
If you're doing a direct-path insert, you're asking Oracle to insert the new data above the high water mark of the table so you bypass the normal code that reuses space in existing blocks for new rows to be inserted. It also has to block other inserts since you can't have the high water mark of the table change during a direct-path insert. This probably isn't a big deal if you've got a downtime window in which to do the load but it would be quite problematic if you wanted the existing tables to be available for other applications during the load.
No, on the contrary, it means you need to do a backup after a NOLOGGING load, not that you can't backup the database.
Allow me to elaborate a bit. Normally, when you do DML in Oracle, the before images of the changes you are are making get logged in UNDO, and all the changes (including the UNDO changes) are first written to REDO. This is how Oracle manages transactions, instance recovery, and database recovery. If a transaction is aborted or rolled back, Oracle uses the information in UNDO to undo the changes your transaction made. If the instance crashes, then on instance restart, Oracle will use the information in REDO and UNDO to recover up to the last committed transaction. First, Oracle will read the REDO and roll forward, then, use UNDO to roll back all the transactions that were not committed at the time of the crash. In this way, Oracle is able to recover up to the last committed transaction.
Now, when you specify an APPEND hint on an insert statement, Oracle will execute the INSERT with direct load. This means that data is loaded into brand new, never before used blocks, from above the highwater mark. Because the blocks being loaded are brand new, there is no "before image", so, Oracle can avoid writing UNDO, which improves performance. If the database is in NOARCHIVELOG mode, then Oracle will also not write REDO. On a database in ARCHIVELOG mode, Oracle will still write REDO, unless, before you do the insert /*+ append */, you set the table to NOLOGGING, (i.e. alter table tab_name nologging;). In that case, REDO logging is disabled for the table. However, this is where you could run into backup/recovery implications. If you do a NOLOGGING direct load, and then you suffer a media failure, and the datafile containing the segment with the nologging operation is restored from a backup taken before the nologging load, then the redo log will not contain the changes required to recover that segment. So, what happens? Well, when you do a NOLOGGING load, Oracle writes extent invaldation records to the redo log, instead of the actual changes. Then, if you use that redo in recovery, those data blocks will be marked logically corrupt. Any subsequent queries against that segment will get an ORA-26040 error.
So, how to avoid this? Well, you should always take a backup imediately following any NOLOGGING direct load. If you restore/recover from a backup taken after the nologging load, there is no problem, because the data will be in the datablocks in the file that was restored.
Hope that's clear,
-Mark
Yes, there should not be any arbitrary limits on query complexity.
If you do
insert /*+ APPEND */ into target_table select .... from source1, source2..., sourceN where
It should work fine. Consider though, that the performance of the load will be limited by the performance of that query, so, be sure it's well-tuned, if you're expecting good performance.
Finally, consider whether setting NOLOGGING on the target table would improve performance significantly. But, also consider the backup recovery implications, if you decide to implement NOLOGGING.
Hope that helps,
-Mark

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