Types of Audit Collection Plug-Ins

Learn what audit collection plug-ins are, which audit collection plug-ins you should use for your audit trails, and what Java-based collection plug-ins you can use with Oracle Database Vault.

What Are Audit Collection Plug-ins?

Learn about audit collection plug-ins.

Audit collection is supported from many database types. See Product Compatibility Matrix for a list of supported database types and versions.

In case audit collection is not supported out of the box from a specific database type, then you can build custom audit collection plug-in to retrieve audit data stored in the audit trails.

A collection plug-in provides functionality similar to the prepackaged collection plug-ins shipped with Oracle Database Security Central, by retrieving audit data stored in audit trails.

Oracle Database Security Central allows developers and third-party vendors to build custom collection plug-ins. These custom plug-ins are capable of collecting audit data from a new target type.

You can write collection plug-ins that collect audit trails stored in database tables and XML files, or that are accessible in any other way.

You can support targets, such as relational databases, operating systems, mid-tier systems, or enterprise applications.

To obtain more individualized audit data, you can create custom collection plug-ins, and deploy them into existing Oracle Database Security Central installations.

Related Topics

• Overview of Oracle Database Security Central

About Oracle DBSecCentral Plug-In Types

You can create two types of collection plug-ins for Oracle DBSecCentral. The actual type that you need to create depends on the properties of the audit trail that you want to collect.

To describe the audit data being collected, you create an XML file, called a mapper file, for the collection plug-in to use. Oracle Audit Vault Server uses this file to access and interpret the audit records being collected. You do not need to write code for this type of plug-in.

There is also a Java-based type of collection plug-in, which uses a Java API. You can design your own Java-based collection plug-in, or you can use one that is prepackaged with Oracle Database Security Central.

Determining Which Audit Collection Plug-in Type to Create

The audit collection plug-in that you use depends on the type of audit trail that you are collecting for Oracle Database Security Central.

You can easily define a mapper file (template) and a collection plug-in if the audit trails you wish to collect are stored in either of the following:

• Database Tables: Stored in database tables that conform to specific constraints

• XML/JSON/CSV Files: Stored in XML/JSON/CSV files based on the Oracle DBSecCentral XML Audit File format

• REST: REST data source that generates data in JSON format.

Related Topics

• Database Table Collection Plug-in Example

• XML File Collection Plug-in Examples

Java-Based Collection Plug-ins

When the audit trail you need to collect is not in a format that a Collection plug-in can easily read, you write Java-based collection plug-ins in Java code.

Using the Java API provided, you can write code to collect these more complex audit trails and send them to the Audit Vault Server repository.