Oracle LogMiner, a utility provided by Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...

 to purchasers of its Oracle database

Oracle database

The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....

, provides methods of querying logged changes made to an Oracle database

Database

A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...

, principally though SQL

SQL

SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....

 commands referencing data in Oracle redo log

Transaction log

In the field of databases in computer science, a transaction log is a history of actions executed by a database management system to guarantee ACID properties over crashes or hardware failures...

s. A GUI

Gui

Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...

 interface for the functionality comes with the Oracle Enterprise Manager

Oracle Enterprise Manager

The computer application Oracle Enterprise Manager aims to manage software produced by Oracle Corporation as well as by some non-Oracle entities.-Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control :...

 product.

LogMiner turns the concept and practices of data mining

Data mining

Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...

 on the internal processes of the database itself.

Database administrator

Database administrator

A database administrator is a person responsible for the design, implementation, maintenance and repair of an organization's database. They are also known by the titles Database Coordinator or Database Programmer, and is closely related to the Database Analyst, Database Modeller, Programmer...

s can use LogMiner to:

• identify the time of a database-event
• isolate transaction
  Database transaction
  A transaction comprises a unit of work performed within a database management system against a database, and treated in a coherent and reliable way independent of other transactions...
  
  s carried out in error by users
• determine steps needed for the recovery
  Data recovery
  Data recovery is the process of salvaging data from damaged, failed, corrupted, or inaccessible secondary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Often the data are being salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives, solid-state drives , USB flash drive,...
  
   of inadvertent changes to data
• assemble data on actual usage for use in performance-tuning
  Performance tuning
  Performance tuning is the improvement of system performance. This is typically a computer application, but the same methods can be applied to economic markets, bureaucracies or other complex systems. The motivation for such activity is called a performance problem, which can be real or anticipated....
  
   and capacity-planning
  Capacity planning
  Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In the context of capacity planning, "capacity" is the maximum amount of work that an organization is capable of completing in a given period of time...
  
  
• auditing the operation of any commands run against the database

Note that LogMiner uses Oracle logs to reconstruct exactly how data changed, whereas the complementary utility Oracle Flashback

Oracle Flashback

In Oracle databases, Flashback tools allow administrators and users to view and manipulate past states of an instance's data without recovering to a fixed point in time.Flashback requires Oracle Enterprise edition....

addresses, reconstructs and presents the finished results of such changes, giving a view of the database at some point in time.

External references

• Supporting Oracle (German) Documents on how to use LogMiner, Auditing and more