How the Unified Auditing Migration Affects Individual Audit Features

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Most of the pre-Oracle Database 12c release 1 (12.1) auditing features can be used before a unified auditing migration. The following table describes how the pre-Oracle Database 12c audit features change in the migration.

Feature Availability in Pre-Migrated Environment Availability in Post-Migrated Environment
General Auditing Features - -
Operating system audit trail Yes No
XML file audit trail Yes No
Network auditing Yes No
The ability of users to audit and to removing auditing from their own schema objects Yes No
Mandatory auditing of audit administrative actions No Yes
Auditing Roles - -
AUDIT_ADMIN Yes, but not needed for users who want to audit their own objects, nor for users who already have the ALTER SYSTEM privilege and want to change the auditing initialization parameters Yes
AUDIT_VIEWER Yes Yes
System Tables - -
SYS.AUD$ Yes Yes, but will only have pre-unified audit records
SYS.FGA_LOG$ Yes Yes, but will only have pre-unified audit records
Initialization Parameters - -
AUDIT_TRAIL Yes Yes, but will not have any effect
AUDIT_FILE_DEST Yes Yes, but will not have any effect
AUDIT_SYS_OPERATIONS Yes Yes, but will not have any effect
AUDIT_SYSLOG_LEVEL Yes Yes, but will not have any effect
UNIFIED_AUDIT_SGA_QUEUE_SIZE Yes, but note that this parameter has been deprecated, but is currently retained for backward compatibility. Yes, but note that this parameter has been deprecated, but is currently retained for backward compatibility.
Data Dictionary Views1 - -
ALL_AUDIT_POLICIES Yes Yes, but only if fine-grained audit policies are created using the DBMS_FGA PL/SQL package
DBA_AUDIT_POLICIES Yes Yes, but only if fine-grained audit policies are created using the DBMS_FGA PL/SQL package
DBA_AUDIT_POLICY_COLUMNS Yes Yes, but only if fine-grained audit policies are created using the DBMS_FGA PL/SQL package
DBA_COMMON_AUDIT_TRAIL Yes Yes, but will only have pre-unified audit records
DBA_AUDIT_EXISTS Yes Yes
DBA_AUDIT_OBJECT Yes Yes
DBA_AUDIT_POLICIES Yes Yes, but only if fine-grained audit policies are created using the DBMS_FGA PL/SQL package
DBA_AUDIT_POLICY_COLUMNS Yes Yes, but only if fine-grained audit policies are created using the DBMS_FGA PL/SQL package
DBA_AUDIT_SESSION Yes Yes, but will only have pre-unified audit records
DBA_AUDIT_STATEMENT Yes Yes, but will only have pre-unified audit records
DBA_AUDIT_TRAIL Yes Yes, but will only have pre-unified audit records. The RLS_INFO column captures audited Oracle VPD predicates.
DBA_FGA_AUDIT_TRAIL Yes Yes, but will only have pre-unified audit records. The RLS_INFO column captures audited Oracle VPD predicates.
DBA_OBJ_AUDIT_OPTS Yes Yes
DBA_PRIV_AUDIT_OPTS Yes Yes
DBA_STMT_AUDIT_OPTS Yes Yes
UNIFIED_AUDIT_TRAIL Yes, but does not collect any audit records Yes, and collects audit records
USER_AUDIT_OBJECT Yes Yes
USER_AUDIT_POLICY_COLUMN Yes Yes, but only if fine-grained audit policies are created using the DBMS_FGA PL/SQL package
USER_AUDIT_POLICIES Yes Yes, but only if fine-grained audit policies are created using the DBMS_FGA PL/SQL package
USER_AUDIT_SESSION Yes Yes
USER_AUDIT_STATEMENT Yes Yes
USER_AUDIT_TRAIL Yes Yes, but will only have pre-unified audit records
USER_OBJ_AUDIT_OPTS Yes Yes
V$XML_AUDIT_TRAIL Yes Yes, but will only have pre-unified audit records. The RLS_INFO column captures audited Oracle VPD predicates.
CREATE AUDIT POLICY, ALTER AUDIT POLICY, and DROP AUDIT POLICY Statements The statements are available, but the audit policies will not write to the old audit trails. When a policy is enabled, its audit records are written to the unified audit trail. Yes, but writes the audit record to the unified audit trail only
AUDIT and NOAUDIT Statements - -
AUDIT Yes, and can be used in a multitenant environment Yes, but enhanced to enable audit policies; create application context audit settings; create audit records on success, failure, or both; and use in a multitenant environment
NOAUDIT Yes, and can be used in a multitenant environment Yes, but changed to disable audit policies, disable application context audit settings, and use in a multitenant environment
DBMS_FGA.ADD_POLICY Procedure Parameters - -
audit_trail Yes, and is used as in previous releases Yes, but when unified auditing is enabled, you can omit this parameter because all records will be written to the unified audit trail.
DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT Package AUDIT_TRAIL_TYPE Property Options - -
DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT.AUDIT_TRAIL_AUD_STD Yes Yes, but only pre-unified audit records
DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT.AUDIT_TRAIL_FGA_STD Yes Yes, but only pre-unified audit records
DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT.AUDIT_TRAIL_DB_STD Yes Yes, but only pre-unified audit records
DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT.AUDIT_TRAIL_OS Yes Yes, but only pre-unified audit records
DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT.AUDIT_TRAIL_XML Yes Yes, but only pre-unified audit records
DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT.AUDIT_TRAIL_FILES Yes Yes, but only pre-unified audit records
DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT.AUDIT_TRAIL_ALL Yes Yes, but only pre-unified audit records
Oracle Database Vault Features - -
DVSYS.AUDIT_TRAIL$ system table Yes Is renamed to DVSYS.OLD_AUDIT_TRAIL$ and retains the old audit records. The previous DVSYS.AUDIT_TRAIL$ table is made into a view named DVSYS.AUDIT_TRAIL$. No new audit records are added.
Oracle Label Security Features - -
SA_AUDIT_ADMIN PL/SQL package Yes No

  1. These data dictionary views will continue to show audit data from audit records that are still in the SYS.AUD$ and SYS.FGA_LOG$ system tables. Unified audit trail records are shown only in the unified audit trail-specific views. You must be granted the AUDIT_ADMIN or AUDIT_VIEWER role to query any views that are not prefaced with USER_. ↩