10/11/2018 Document 1509723.

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Copyright (c) 2018, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle Confidential.

Oracle Database Auditing Performance (Doc ID 1509723.1)

Modified: 04-Aug-2018 Type: HOWTO

In this Document

Goal
Solution
Auditing Performance Overhead and Testing
Known Issues: Auditing Performance
Audit Trail Maintenance
References

APPLIES TO:

Oracle Database - Enterprise Edition - Version 10.1.0.2 to 12.2.0.1 [Release 10.1 to 12.2]
Information in this document applies to any platform.

GOAL

What information is available on Oracle Database auditing performance and/or overhead?

This document covers the below topic:

Auditing Performance Overhead and Testing

Known Issues: Auditing Performance
Audit Trail Maintenance

SOLUTION

Auditing Performance Overhead and Testing

Refer to the following whitepaper:

"Oracle Database Auditing: Performance Guidelines"

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/products/audit-vault/learnmore/twp-security-auditperformance-166655.pdf

Important! The exact performance impact on any given database cannot be assessed without testing. The performance
degradation is proportional to the volume of audited statements. Be sure to plan a detailed auditing strategy before using
auditing, and then test the performance impact on one's own environments.

Known Issues: Auditing Performance

As mentioned above, auditing performance is related to audit record volume. Consequently, in situations where many audit
records are being (or have already been) generated, this can have a negative impact on auditing performance.

See also:

Note 1375419.1 - Obsoleted "BY SESSION" Audit Option Leads to Massive Audit Output (Huge AUD$)
Note 852815.1 - AUD$ Growing After Upgrade to 11g or ATC patch installed
Note 1171314.1 - Huge/Large/Excessive Number Of Audit Records Are Being Generated In The Database

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Audit Trail Maintenance

For the above reasons, managing one's audit trail, preventing it from growing to an unmanageable size, is important to
auditing performance.

Note 73408.1 - How to Truncate, Delete, or Purge Rows from the Audit Trail Table SYS.AUD$
Note 731908.1 - New Feature DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT To Manage And Purge Audit Information

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