Audit Trigger Activity in Oracle

Auditing a trigger activity or SQL inside trigger is no different than auditing normal SQL. In our business environment it was required to audit triggering event whenever the SQL statement inside trigger does unsucessful execution.

We can achive our goal by simply audit the SQL for which trigger fires. Additionally you may also wish to audit the SQL statements inside trigger.

Here is a test. Inside test schema I have made an example.

Connect as test user and create three tables.

SQL> conn test/test
Connected.

SQL> create table test(a number, b varchar2(4), c varchar2(8));
Table created.

SQL> create table test1(a number, b varchar2(3), c varchar2(3));
Table created.

SQL> create table test2(a number, b varchar2(3), c varchar2(3));
Table created.

2)Create the trigger. It will fire before insert operation done on table test. Then it will insert these value into table test1 and update the table test2.

SQL> create or replace trigger test_t before insert on test for each row begin
insert into test1 values(:new.a,:new.b,:new.c);
update test2 set b=:new.b where a=:new.a;
end;
/
Trigger created.

3)Set the audit_trail parameter to DB, EXTENDED so that we can get full text of SQL.
SQL> show parameter audit_trail
NAME TYPE VALUE
------------------------------------ ----------- ------------------------------
audit_trail string NONE

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

4)Just enter one row in test2 table. It is nothing but to see whether trigger can update test2 table.
SQL> insert into test2 values(1,'A','B');
1 row created.

SQL> commit;
Commit complete.

5)As audit_trail is static parameter. So in order to effect this parameter connect as sysdba and do a shutdown and startup.

SQL> conn / as sysdba
Connected.

SQL> startup force
ORACLE instance started.

Total System Global Area 574619648 bytes
Fixed Size 1250236 bytes
Variable Size 197135428 bytes
Database Buffers 373293056 bytes
Redo Buffers 2940928 bytes
Database mounted.
Database opened.

SQL> conn test/test
Connected.
SQL> show parameter audit_trail;
NAME TYPE VALUE
------------------------------------ ----------- ------------------------------
audit_trail string DB, EXTENDED

6)Enable audit on test table for each insert operation whenever not successfully done.
SQL> audit insert on test.test by access whenever not successful;
Audit succeeded.

SQL> insert into test values(1,'Tes','T2');
1 row created.

SQL> commit;
Commit complete.

7)In the dba_audit_trail view no data as insert sucessful.
SQL> select username,sql_text from dba_audit_trail;
no rows selected

SQL> select * from test1;
A B C
---------- --- ---
1 Tes T2

SQL> select * from test2;
A B C
---------- --- ---
1 Tes B

8)A failure in insert operation and trigger will fire and ba_audit_trail view will be populated.

SQL> insert into test values(2,'Test','Test2');
insert into test values(2,'Test','Test2')
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-12899: value too large for column "TEST"."TEST1"."B" (actual: 4, maximum:3)
ORA-06512: at "TEST.TEST_T", line 2
ORA-04088: error during execution of trigger 'TEST.TEST_T'

SQL> select username,sql_text from dba_audit_trail;

USERNAME                             SQL_TEXT
--------------                       --------------------------
TEST                                 insert into test values(2,'Test','Test2')