Thread: table logging

table logging

From
Jeff Janes
Date:
I am looking for some very simple table logging.  I am not trying to
do auditing in a hostile environment, just simple logging.

I found two candidates, tablelog from pgfoundry, and
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Audit_trigger_91plus

The first has the advantage of being simple, but hasn't been
maintained in 5 years which is a little worrisome.

The latter is very flexible, but is rather complex as you have to fish
out the data with queries against hstore object, instead of tables
with the same structure as the tables being logged.  On the other hand
it does deal with columns being added to the underlying tables more
gracefully.

Are there widely used/supported options other than these two, and of
course rolling my own?

Cheers,

Jeff


Re: table logging

From
Julian
Date:
On 29/10/12 06:25, Jeff Janes wrote:
> I am looking for some very simple table logging.  I am not trying to
> do auditing in a hostile environment, just simple logging.
>
> I found two candidates, tablelog from pgfoundry, and
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Audit_trigger_91plus
>
> The first has the advantage of being simple, but hasn't been
> maintained in 5 years which is a little worrisome.
>
> The latter is very flexible, but is rather complex as you have to fish
> out the data with queries against hstore object, instead of tables
> with the same structure as the tables being logged.  On the other hand
> it does deal with columns being added to the underlying tables more
> gracefully.
>
> Are there widely used/supported options other than these two, and of
> course rolling my own?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeff
>
>
Hi Jeff, It does really depend on the requirements of your app and what
you want to log.
I have used tablelog and also rolled my own, both work fine.
Theres also the idea of "revision" logging (such as a web page
you wish to revert back to/review).
These are "insert" tables, there are never any actual "DELETE"s or
"UPDATE"s just "INSERT"s there is no log table per se.

After a brief look at Audit Trigger it seems like a simple solution to
table
auditing, perhaps you can hack at that to not use hstore and log what
you want?

I usually avoid full blown "audits" on a table if I can and go with the
"revision"
style of logging (such as change of address, email, etc) if its required.

This solution can lead to bloat if only the data in 1 column differs
to the original. But bloat is also hard to avoid if one letter in a
large web page
(stored in 1 column) differs to the original, overcoming that can lead
to complexities.

So this all depends on the requirements of your app.

It can be fair to say that all kinds of logging leads to bloat that you'll
have to deal with later. (partitioning, purging etc).

Julian.



Re: table logging

From
Richard Huxton
Date:
On 28/10/12 19:25, Jeff Janes wrote:
> I am looking for some very simple table logging.  I am not trying to
> do auditing in a hostile environment, just simple logging.
>
> I found two candidates, tablelog from pgfoundry, and
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Audit_trigger_91plus
>
> The first has the advantage of being simple, but hasn't been
> maintained in 5 years which is a little worrisome.

I've got tablelog in use on one of my projects. I had to make one small
fix when I upgraded the db to 9.1 - something to do with quote escaping.
Can't remember the details I'm afraid.

Other than that, it seems to work fine.


--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd