How to identify when a table record has been updated, inserted, or deleted

[RemoteUser]

Hello. We are trying to identify when records within tables upon a remote vendor Progress database has been updated, inserted or deleted. We wish to optimize our data pulls to only include records that have had such an event.

• The vendor states the Progress version is 10.2B.
• We can only access the database utilizing ODBC. We utilize the Progress OpenEdge 10.1C driver.
• This is a remote vender, so we only have read access to the tables...thus no ability to modify the database to do such things as add triggers to capture an insert/update/delete event or record timestamps, etc.
• The majority of the tables do not contain record insert/update timestamps.
• We do have the previously downloaded copy of the tables on our side prior to the download, thus we can do comparisons as we are performing the download...but the tables and rows can be very large and comparing field by field updates is not very optimal. We can save the current ROWID, thus through comparison we can see when rows have been inserted or deleted, but it still not an optimal method.

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I was not successful in finding a similar topic. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[RealHeavyDude]

The database provides an audit feature which would be able to provide the information you need if switched on and configured accordingly. But this feature is not enabled out-of-the-box - you need to deliberately switch it on and configure it. Using the feature does not alter anything in the existing application or the database schema therefore your vendor should not be concerned. Chances are they are totally oblivious to this feature and will probably tell you that something like that is not possible.

Most tasks around the auditing are database administrator tasks - if you have the know how and the access to the database you could even use it without your vendor ever being bothered.

Heavy Regards, RealHeavyDude.

 

[RemoteUser]

Thanks RealHeavyDude!

I am reading the information on auditing and it looks very promising. I will visit with our vendor and see if this is a possibility.