How do you read the Oracle transaction log

Question

Instead of placing triggers on tables everywhere in an Oracle database, is there a Java API that I can use to read transactions off the Oracle transaction log?

My purpose is to be able to detect transactions going into a proprietary(vendor) database and react accordingly. We can't modify the database so that we do not void our maintenance contract.

Please help!

Answer 1

If you are running in *nix, there is a perl module that you could use to tail the file; then break down the lines for yourself.

Answer 2

There is LogMiner which is SQL based (and so you could access through JDBC).

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14215/logminer.htm#sthref1875

Or you can look at Oracle Streams which reads the logs and generates 'logical change messages' into a queue from the log contents.

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14229/strms_over.htm#i1006309