Using logminer

A customer wanted to know how a certain record in their EBS database was updated.
A colleque of mine decided to use logminer to find out what happened to that specific record.
Using logminer, all changes in our archived logfiles are written to the v$logmnr_contents and you can query this view using sql statements.

So, how does it work ? We choose the online catalog variant..(see Meatlink note 291686.1 for more options)

First, try to find out which logfiles you should examine. In our case, when was the record updated. We figured it had to be between 10:00 am untill 04:00 pm. So we had to use like 33 archived logfiles ! Teh change had to be in one of them.
Once you have decided which logfiles to use, you must 'add' them using the following syntax :

SQL> execute DBMS_LOGMNR.ADD_LOGFILE (LOGFILENAME => '/XXX01.LOG',OPTIONS =>DBMS_LOGMNR.NEW);

The first logfile must be added with the LOGMNR.NEW option. If you have more logfiles, the follwoing ones must have the LOGMNR.addfile option. Otherwise, only the last logfile is used :)

When all logfiles are added, you can start the logminer

SQL> EXECUTE DBMS_LOGMNR.START_LOGMNR(OPTIONS => RBMS_LOGMNR.DICT_FROM_ONLINE_CATALOG);

Now, you can query the v$logmnr_contents view. We decided to spool the output, make it a little bit eassier to search.

SQL> select username, operation, SQL_REDO,SQL_UNDO FROM V$LOGMNR_CONTENTS where sql_redo like '%updated_table%';

When finished..

SQL> EXECUTE DBMS_LOGMNR.end_LOGMNR

Now the searching begins. We finally succeeded, but searching is not easy.