5 Using Oracle Data Redaction with Other Oracle Products

You can use Oracle Data Redaction with other Oracle products, such as Oracle Virtual Private Database or Oracle Enterprise Manager Data Masking Pack.

This chapter contains the following topics:

Using Oracle Data Redaction with Oracle Virtual Private Database
Using Oracle Data Redaction with Oracle Enterprise Manager Data Masking Pack
Using Oracle Data Redaction with Oracle Database Vault
Using Oracle Data Redaction with Oracle Data Pump

5.1 Using Oracle Data Redaction with Oracle Virtual Private Database

Oracle Virtual Private Database policies are unaffected by Oracle Data Redaction because the Virtual Private Database inline view, which contains the Virtual Private Database predicate, acts on actual values.

Oracle Data Redaction differs from Oracle Virtual Private Database in the following ways:

Oracle Data Redaction provides more redacting features than Oracle Virtual Private Database, which only supports NULL redacting. Many applications cannot use NULL redacting, so Data Redaction is a good solution for these applications.
Oracle Virtual Private Database policies can be static, dynamic, and context sensitive, whereas Data Redaction policies only allow static and context-sensitive policy expressions.
Data Redaction permits only one policy to be defined on a table or view, whereas you can define multiple Virtual Private Database policies on an object.
Data Redaction is when application users try to access an object that is protected by a Data Redaction policy using a synonym, but (unlike Oracle Virtual Private Database) Data Redaction does not support the creation of policies directly on the synonyms themselves.

5.2 Using Oracle Data Redaction with Oracle Enterprise Manager Data Masking Pack

Oracle Enterprise Manager Data Masking Pack enables you to create a development or test copy of the production database, by taking the data in the production database, masking this data in bulk, and then putting the resulting masked data in the development or test copy. You can still apply Data Redaction policies to the non-production database, in order to redact columns that contain data that was already masked by the Oracle Enterprise Manager Data Masking Pack.

Remember that Oracle Enterprise Manager Data Masking Pack is used to mask data sets in bulk when you want to move the data to development and test environments. Data Redaction is mainly designed for redacting at runtime for production applications in a consistent fashion across multiple applications, without having to make application code changes.

5.3 Using Oracle Data Redaction with Oracle Database Vault

You can use Oracle Data Redaction in an Oracle Database Vault environment. For example, if there is an Oracle Database Vault realm around an object, a user who does not belong to the authorized list of realm owners or participants cannot see the object data, regardless of whether the user was granted the EXEMPT REDACTION POLICY privilege. If the user attempts a DML or DDL statement on the data, error messages result.

5.4 Using Oracle Data Redaction with Oracle Data Pump

This section contains:

Oracle Data Pump Security Model for Oracle Data Redaction
Exporting Data Using the EXPDP Utility access_method Parameter

5.4.1 Oracle Data Pump Security Model for Oracle Data Redaction

The DATAPUMP_EXP_FULL_DATABASE role includes the powerful EXEMPT REDACTION POLICY system privilege. Remember that by default the DBA role is granted the DATAPUMP_EXP_FULL_DATABASE role (as well as DATAPUMP_IMP_FULL_DATABASE). This enables users who were granted these roles to be exempt from Data Redaction policies. This means that, when you export objects with Data Redaction policies defined on them, the actual data in the protected tables is copied to the Data Pump target system without being redacted. Users with these roles, including users who were granted the DBA role, are able to see the actual data in the target system.

5.4.2 Exporting Data Using the EXPDP Utility access_method Parameter

If you are using Oracle Data Pump to perform full database export operations using the new Data Pump default settings (direct_path), and if you receive error messages that you do not understand, then use this section to repeat the operation in such a way as to better understand the error.

If you try to use the Oracle Data Pump Export (EXPDP) utility with the access_method parameter set to direct_path to export data from a schema that contains an object that has a Data Redaction policy defined on it, then the following error message may appear and the export operation fails:

ORA-31696: unable to export/import TABLE_DATA:"schema.table" using client specified DIRECT_PATH method

This problem only occurs when you perform a schema-level export as a user who was not granted the EXP_FULL_DATABASE role. It does not occur during a full database export, which requires the EXP_FULL_DATABASE role. The EXP_FULL_DATABASE role includes the EXEMPT REDACTION POLICY system privilege, which bypasses Data Redaction policies.

To find the underlying problem, try the EXPDP invocation again, but do not set the access_method parameter to direct_path. Instead, use either automatic or external_table. The underlying problem could be a permissions problem, for example:

ORA-28081: Insufficient privileges - the command references a redacted object.