Oracle Database: Write arbitrary log messages to the syslog from PL/SQL

Syslog is a standard for message logging, often employed in *NIX environments. It allows separation of the software that generates messages, the system that stores them, and the software that reports and analyzes them. Each message is labeled with a facility code, indicating the software type generating the message, and assigned a severity level.

In *NIX systems syslog messages often end up in /var/log/messages. You can configure these messages to be forwarded to remote syslog daemons. Also a pattern which often seen is that the local log files are monitored and processed by an agent.

Oracle database audit information can be send to the syslog daemon. See for example the audit functionality. If you however want to use a custom format in the syslog or write an entry to the syslog which is not related to an audit action, this functionality will not suffice. How to achieve this without depending on the audit functionality is described in this blog post. PL/SQL calls database hosted Java code. This code executes an UDP call to the local syslog. You can find the code here.