ALTER TABLE removes it from audit trail
Snorri Bergmann found ALTER TABLE ADD column removed the WITH AUDIT setting on 14.10.FC7W1. Mike Walker said it has long behaved this way, so include ADD AUDIT again and check audited tables. Andreas Legner said it would be fixed in 14.10.xC10; David Williams still saw it in FC10W1, and Andreas said it is fixed in xC11.
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Hi.
Ran into a strange situation.
ALTER TABLE xxx ADD AUDIT;Do a dbschema and the WITH AUDIT clause is present.
ALTER TABLE xxx ADD (c int); -- or whateverDo a dbschema and the WITH AUDIT clause is gone.
Surely a bug? Newest version I tried this with is 14.10.FC7W1
Best regards,
-S
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Snorri Bergmann
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#Informix
This is the way it has been for years. When you alter a table previously defined as "with audit", the auditing of that table disappears. When you alter the table, you need to include ", add audit" again. Whether a bug or a "feature" is debatable. It's certainly confusing as you would expect that the auditing would be retained after doing a simple alter. Maybe a feature request? ------------------------------ Mike Walker xDB Systems, Inc www.xdbsystems.com ------------------------------
Thanks Mike. This is very confusing to say the least. Do you know if this behavior is documented somewhere? Best regs, -Snorri ------------------------------ Snorri Bergmann ------------------------------
I do not know for sure if this behavior is documented, but I don't think so. I took a quick look at the documentation and could not find any mention of the row-level auditing being dropped when the table is altered. I found out by running into this situation myself. I touched on this in a presentation I did on Informix auditing. See slide 45 here: https://advancedatatools.com/Downloads/InformixBestPractices-Auditing-MikeWalker.pdf I recommend there that you perform checks to make sure tables that you have set up for auditing are still being audited, and that it hasn't been dropped because somebody altered the table. ------------------------------ Mike Walker xDB Systems, Inc www.xdbsystems.com ------------------------------
FYI: looking like next fixpack (14.10.xC10) is going to have this fixed. ------------------------------ Andreas Legner ------------------------------
Thanks Andreas. Best regards, -Snorri ------------------------------ Snorri Bergmann ------------------------------
BTW: Any idea when xC10 will be released? ------------------------------ Snorri Bergmann ------------------------------
Hi. I did a test with 14.10.FC10W1 and this is still not fixed https://justdaveinfo.wordpress.com/2023/12/28/informix-auditing-and-alter-table/ Does this have an APAR yet? Or a fix date? Regards, David. ------------------------------ David Williams ------------------------------
Hi David, I can report that this is fixed since quite a while, and an internal drop of 14.10.xC11 indeed doesn't reproduce it any more (since not reported via a support case, it didn't get an APAR). (14.10.xC10W1 mainly meant to address a couple of security issues.) BR, Andreas ------------------------------ Andreas Legner ------------------------------