Why You Can Get ORA-00942 Errors with Flashback Query
By Chris Saxon-Oracle on Jan 19, 2016
I've recently been playing with one of my favorite Oracle features: Flashback. More specifically, Flashback Data Archive.
This extends the power of flashback query. Normally you can only use this to query as far back as your undo allows. With Flashback Data Archive (FBA), Oracle keeps a permanent store of a table's history (up to the retention period).
So using this you can run "as of" queries over a larger period. This enables you to see what was in a table days, months or even years ago! You can also view all the changes to a table between two times. Enabling FBA is a quick and easy way to audit data changes.
Even better, unlike standard flashback query, you can go back to a time before you ran DDL against the table.
And the best part? As of 12c it's FREE!*
But I found myself hitting a strange error. After creating the archive and adding a table to it, I was getting "ORA-00942: table or view does not exist" errors:
SQL> select * from products as of timestamp sysdate - interval '1' minute; select * from products as of timestamp sysdate - interval '1' minute * ERROR at line 1: ORA-00942: table or view does not exist
Strange.
The table itself existed. So what's going wrong?
How Oracle enables flashback archive on a table
When you add a table to a flashback archive, Oracle creates extra tables in the background for you. It uses these to construct historic versions of the data.
You can find one of these tables with the following query:
select * from sys.dba_flashback_archive_tables; TABLE_NAME OWNER_NAME FLASHBACK_ARCHIVE_NA ARCHIVE_TABLE_NAME STATUS ------------ ---------- -------------------- -------------------- ------------- PRODUCTS CHRIS FB_ARCHIVE SYS_FBA_HIST_104694 ENABLED
The sys_fba_hist_* table is where the past data sits. Let's look at that table:
SQL> select * from sys_fba_hist_104694; select * from sys_fba_hist_104694 * ERROR at line 1: ORA-00942: table or view does not exist
What the… the history table isn't there!?
Of course, it's not my table that doesn't exist; it's the archive table that doesn't exist!
So why does that matter?
When you run a flashback query on an FBA enabled table, Oracle may also query the flashback tables. You can see these by looking at the execution plan for a flashback query:
So why did I get an error?
When you place a table in a flashback archive, Oracle does this in a separate process. Because of this, if it fails for any reason, you don't receive an exception!
How to fix it
In my case, I had forgotten to give my user a quota on the FBA tablespace. So the background process was unable to create the tables. So when I ran:
select * from products as of timestamp sysdate - interval '1' minute;
Oracle was looking for sys_fba* tables that didn't exist!
To avoid this, ensure you grant the table owner has a quota allocated on the FBA tablespace. Also verify that there's space available in it. Once the user is setup correctly, disable and re-enable flashback archive on your tables.
Creating the history tables may fail for other reasons. So if you plan on using FBA, double check it's working before you rely on it.
If you managed to get yourself in this mess, you can get out of it by disassociating and reassociating the table with the FDA. See MOS note 1330817.1 if you need further details about this. Or if you're stuck, contact support!
If you'd like to have a go yourself, then you can use this script.
* This is also back ported to 11.2.0.4. Applies to Basic Flashback Archive only. Optimization requires EE license and the Advanced Compression Option.
