Determining how and where to generate audit information

The place and how the audit information is stored can be crucial to determine the operations performed on the database. In this recipe, we will discuss how and where this information can be collected and we will cover the possible destinations of audit trails and what options we may have.

Getting ready

All steps from this recipe will be performed on the HACKDB database.

How to do it...

For audit trail destination we have the option to store the audit records internally within the database or as external files.

1. The default value for the AUDIT_TRAIL parameter is DB. By using this option, minimal audit information will be generated. If we want to extend the audit information to include issued statements and the bind variables that were used, we must utilize the EXTENDED option. Connect as system and issue the following statement:

   SQL> alter system set audit_trail='DB','EXTENDED' scope=spfile;
   
   System altered.
   
   SQL>
   

2. To direct the auditing...