You design and create your database to serve a set of purposes. But how do you know exactly how the database is being used in the real world?
Your Oracle database gives you the ability to audit its operations. This auditing capability will create a history of the interactions between users andthe history of the database . This can be can used for various purposes, from diagnosing the cause of performance problems to checking for potential security violations.
By the time you complete this module, you should be able to:

1. List the types of things that can be audited
2. Enable the audit feature
3. Audit the use of a SQL statement
4. Generate audit trail reports
5. Audit the use of a specific Oracle privilege
6. Audit the use of specific database objects
7. Delete old audit trail records

Although you may not need to audit your Oracle database in the course of normal operations, exceptional circumstances may cause you to need to take advantage of this feature.
In the next lesson, we will begin by looking at the types of things you can audit.