Reliability

Two additional elements help in ensuring the E-Maj reliability: internal checks are performed at some key moments of tables groups life and event trigers can block some risky operations.

Internal checks

When a function is executed to start a tables group, to set a mark or to rollback a tables group, E-Maj performs some checks in order to verify the integrity of the tables groups to process.

These tables group integrity checks verify that:

  • the PostgreSQL version at tables group creation time is compatible with the current version,

  • each application sequence or table of the group always exists,

  • each table of the group has its log table, its log function and its triggers,

  • the log tables structure always reflects the related application tables structure, and contains all required technical columns,

  • for ROLLBACKABLE tables groups, no table has been altered as UNLOGGED or WITH OIDS,

  • for ROLLBACKABLE tables groups, application tables have their primary key and their structure has not changed.

By using the emaj_verify_all() function, the administrator can perform the same checks on demand on all tables groups.

Event triggers

Installing E-Maj adds 2 event triggers of type “sql_drop“:

  • emaj_sql_drop_trg blocks the drop attempts of:

    • any E-Maj object (log schema, log table, log sequence, log function and log trigger),

    • any application table or sequence belonging to a tables group in LOGGING state,

    • any primary key of a table belonging to a rollbackable tables group,

    • any schema containing at least one table or sequence belonging to a tables group in LOGGING state.

  • emaj_protection_trg blocks the drop attempts of the emaj extension itself and the main emaj schema.

Installing E-Maj also adds an event trigger of type “table_rewrite”:

  • emaj_table_rewrite_trg blocks any structure change of application or log table.

It is possible to deactivate and reactivate these event triggers thanks to 2 functions: emaj_disable_protection_by_event_triggers() and emaj_enable_protection_by_event_triggers().

However, the protections do not cover all risks. In particular, they do not prevent any tables or sequences renaming or any schema change. And some other DDL statements altering tables structure do not fire any trigger.