ABSTRACT
Fine-grained auditing (FGA) was introduced as a granular audit option for SELECT statements in Oracle 9i. It was then enhanced in 10g to also include Data Manipulation Language (DML). FGA was added to the Oracle database feature set not as a replacement for standard auditing, but as a way to address audit requirements which explicitly specify conditions for which an audit record needs to be created. Such requirements can sometimes be articulated based on data within certain columns or simply by which columns are being accessed. Using standard auditing you can specify what you want audited based on commands and objects. It’s an “all or nothing” specifi cationyou can’t specify that you only want an audit record if the user accessed certain rows or certain columns. FGA augments this capability by allowing you to specify granular conditions which determine whether or not an audit record should be written to the audit trail.
