Overview

Flashback supports recovery at all levels including the row, transaction, table, and the entire database. Flashback provides an ever growing set of features to view and rewind data back and forth in time, namely:

• Flashback Database: restore the entire database to a specific point-in-time, using Oracle-optimized flashback logs, rather than via backups and forward recovery.
• Flashback Table: easily recover tables to a specific point-in-time, useful when a logical corruption is limited to one or a set of tables instead of the entire database.
• Flashback Drop: recover an accidentally dropped table. It restores the dropped table, and all of its indexes, constraints, and triggers, from the Recycle Bin (a logical container of all dropped objects).
• Flashback Transaction: undo the effects of a single transaction, and optionally, all of its dependent transactions. via a single PL/SQL operation or by using an Enterprise Manager wizard.
• Flashback Transaction Query: see all the changes made by a specific transaction, useful when an erroneous transaction changed data in multiple rows or tables.
• Flashback Query: query any data at some point-in-time in the past. This powerful feature can be used to view and logically reconstruct corrupted data that may have been deleted or changed inadvertently.
• Flashback Versions Query: retrieve different versions of a row across a specified time interval instead of a single point-in-time.
• Flashback Time Travel: efficiently manage and query long-term historical data. Flashback Time Travel automatically tracks every transactional change made to database data and maintains a secure, and easily accessible, archive of historic data.

The Flashback features offer the capability to query historical data, perform change analysis, and perform self-service repair to recover from logical corruptions while the database is online. With Oracle Flashback Technology, you can indeed undo the past.