What is DB Forensics?
DB Forensics is a DBA tool developed by Oracle experts among the best in France. This tool permits an access to your data at block level, so you can rescue almost of your data in almost all the cases of data loss (database crash, block corruption, unwilling deleted data...).
But it allows much more use cases : identifying persisting data, B Tree indexes optimization, Change system password, uncorrupt blocks, fill blocks or table...
DB Forensics offers a rare intuitive graphical interface, unusual for tools of such a level of expertise !
DB Forensics has the advantage of offering various companion tools related to security, data recovery, analysis, and that define it as a real "Swiss Army knife" for the Oracle administrator. The main advantage of DB Forensics is being able to cope with critical situations for which Oracle-integrated tools are ineffective.
A real magic wand ...
Thanks to its blocks analysis, decoding and conversion functionalities, DBF can automatically find the types associated with data. During a deleting or updating Oracle transaction, some data may be "lost"; although they have not actually been removed from the datafile, however, they are now definitely unavailable. DB Forensics has a specific algorithm to find and access those "deleted" or "updated" records. In the case of corrupted or "lost" data, these features modify the information directly into the block to solve the problem.
A tool for testing and prevention with ease
To test its restoration protocols, a director of Oracle database can use to corrupt DB Forensics - so obviously a controlled-block (for example, by modifying the structure of a line so that its decoding by the Oracle engine fails). DB Forensics has a function to de-corrupt block recalculating its checksum. In summary, when the usual methods of restoration have been exhausted, this feature can, in some cases, allow a restart base. Which can prevent recovery operations obsolete data. DB Forensics has the great advantage of allowing the export in Oracle database or a simple Excel (xlsx) file. Filters are then used to retrieve records from one or more specific and tables for each of these tables, rows that have a specific status: active lines, "deleted", "updated". This feature allows to cope with critical situations: base decommissioned without backup or an inoperative backup, unintentional deletion of records or an entire table by a user
Main Features :
Uncorrupt blocks or whole database
Oracle computes a checksum for each block, named chkval. Sometimes, blocks can be corrupted for software or hardware failures : data is no longer accessible.
- Read accessible data inside a corrupted block
- Recompute block chkval (if corruption came from this corrupted information)
- Update corrupted data inside corrupted block and force Oracle to watch it as a non-corrupted one
- Deliberately corrupt a block, in order to test your monitoring system or your restoration procedures
Access updated or deleted data
For performance reasons, Oracle chooses not to modify data inside datafiles, but to rewrite them. The same behaviour applies for deleted data : it can persist a long time inside your datafiles !
- Destroy this outdated or deleted data
- Seek old data revisions, catch and visualize them
- Find the deleted traces of hackers and check the internal structure of Oracle data block (like non-audited password change...)
- See data as it could go out of your IS in case of test to an external supplier
DB Forensics helps you to retrieve this data with advanced data seek system based on regular expressions or patterns.
Total or partial data retrieval from corruputed/crashed database
Even if your database doesn't start, data it always physically available. DB Forensics can access this readable data, and export it into a multiple stylesheets Excel2007 file format or directly push them into your Oracle database !
This procedure can even help DBAs to restore deleted or updated data !
DB Forensics is able to proceed on several data files situations :
- Access to your datafiles (even deleted) directly from the filesystem
- Raw scan disk
- File caving : checks block by block to identify data (could be long)
- Bigfile tablespaces : even if metadata are corrupted (could be long)
- deleted or corrupted datafiles
- ASM disk files
Change SYSTEM password
In the event of losing your SYSTEM password, DB Forensics can change it on the fly. DB Forensics computes a hashkey and flushes it inside the SYSTEM tablespace.
This functionality is available for Oracle 7 to Oracle 11 databases.
Watch and analyze Oracle B*Tree indexes
B*Tree indexes are mainly responsible of the performance of your RDBMS. Necessity of re-build them is a major preoccupation for all DBAs.
DB Forensics enables you to graphically represent your B*Tree indexes, navigate through them and work out their efficiency.
It permits you to also visualize the compression of your indexes.
Supported types
Supported segment types
- Tables
- B*Tree and Bitmap indexes
- Cluster Chained lines almost handled
- User defined types Supported data types
- IOT Tables, HEAP Tables, CLUSTER Tables
Supported data types
- Char / Varchar / Varchar2
- NChar / NVarchar2
- Long
- Number
- Date
- Blob / Clob / NClob
- BFile
- Raw / Long Raw
- Binary float / Binary double
- Timestamp