Logging and Auditing

PostgreSQL provides a very rich logging infrastructure. Being able to examine the log is a key skill for every database administrator—logs provide hints and information about what the cluster has done, what it is doing, and what happened in the past. This chapter will explain the basics about PostgreSQL log configuration, providing you with an explanation of how to examine logs using either manual approaches, such as reading every log line the cluster produces, or by using automated tools that can help in getting a complete overview of the cluster activity. Related to logging is the topic of auditing, which is the capability of tracking who did what to which data. Auditing is often enforced by government laws, rather than the needs of the database administrators. However, a good auditing system can also help administrators in identifying what happened...