What are the benefits and drawbacks of using unified auditing in Oracle databases?

2 Enhanced performance and security

Another benefit of unified auditing is that it enhances the performance and security of auditing operations. Unified auditing uses a background process called the audit writer to asynchronously write audit records to the unified audit trail, which reduces the impact on the database performance and availability. Unified auditing also encrypts the audit records by default, which protects them from unauthorized access or tampering. Moreover, unified auditing supports role-based access control and separation of duties for audit administrators and users, which improves the accountability and compliance of audit activities.

3 Flexible and comprehensive reporting

A third benefit of unified auditing is that it provides flexible and comprehensive reporting capabilities for audit data. You can use standard SQL queries or views to access and analyze the unified audit trail, which allows you to filter, sort, group, or join audit records based on various criteria, such as user, action, object, timestamp, or outcome. You can also use predefined reports or create your own custom reports using Oracle tools, such as Enterprise Manager or Audit Vault. Unified auditing also supports cross-database and cross-platform auditing, which enables you to audit distributed or heterogeneous environments and generate consolidated reports.

4 Migration and compatibility issues

One of the potential drawbacks of using unified auditing is that it requires migration and compatibility considerations for existing databases and applications. Unified auditing is not enabled by default in Oracle 12c and later versions, and you need to perform a one-time migration process to switch from the traditional auditing methods to the unified auditing mode. This process may involve downtime, backup, testing, and verification steps, depending on your database configuration and audit settings. Additionally, some features or functions of the traditional auditing methods may not be supported or may behave differently in the unified auditing mode, such as fine-grained auditing policies, audit file formats, or audit trail purge procedures.

5 Resource and storage requirements

Another possible drawback of using unified auditing is that it imposes resource and storage requirements for audit data collection and management. Unified auditing captures more audit data than the traditional auditing methods, which may increase the CPU, memory, and network usage of the database and the audit writer process. Unified auditing also stores more audit data in the unified audit trail, which may consume more disk space and require more backup and recovery operations. You need to monitor and tune the performance and capacity of your database and audit system to ensure that unified auditing does not affect your service level agreements or operational efficiency.