Journal management

Journal contains information about metadata operations done on your database.

The metadata operations can result from a management command that a user executed, or internal management commands that the system executed, such as drop extents by retention.

Note

• Metadata operations that encompass adding new extents, such as .ingest, .append, .move and others, will not have matching events shown in the Journal.
• The data in the columns of the result-set, as well as the format in which it's presented, isn't contractual. Taking a dependency on them isn't recommended.

Event	EventTimestamp	Database	EntityName	UpdatedEntityName	EntityVersion	EntityContainerName
CREATE-TABLE	2017-01-05 14:25:07	InternalDb	MyTable1	MyTable1	v7.0	InternalDb
RENAME-TABLE	2017-01-13 10:30:01	InternalDb	MyTable1	MyTable2	v8.0	InternalDb

OriginalEntityState	UpdatedEntityState	ChangeCommand	Principal
.	Name: MyTable1, Attributes: Name='[MyTable1].[col1]', Type='I32'	.create table MyTable1 (col1:int)	imike@fabrikam.com
.	The database properties (too long to be displayed here)	.create database TestDB persist (@"https://imfbkm.blob.core.windows.net/md", @"https://imfbkm.blob.core.windows.net/data")	Microsoft Entra app id=76263cdb-abcd-545644e9c404
Name: MyTable1, Attributes: Name='[MyTable1].[col1]', Type='I32'	Name: MyTable2, Attributes: Name='[MyTable1].[col1]', Type='I32'	.rename table MyTable1 to MyTable2	rdmik@fabrikam.com

Item	Description
Event	The metadata event name
EventTimestamp	The event timestamp
Database	Metadata of this database was changed following the event
EntityName	The entity name that the operation was executed on, before the change
UpdatedEntityName	The new entity name after the change
EntityVersion	The new metadata version (db/cluster) following the change
EntityContainerName	The entity container name (entity=column, container=table)
OriginalEntityState	The state of the entity (entity properties) before the change
UpdatedEntityState	The new state after the change
ChangeCommand	The executed management command that triggered the metadata change
Principal	The principal (user/app) that executed the management command

.show journal

The .show journal command returns a list of metadata changes on databases or the cluster that the user has admin access to.

Permissions

Everyone (cluster access) can execute the command.

Results returned will include:

• All journal entries of the user executing the command.
• All journal entries of databases that the user executing the command has admin access to.
• All cluster journal entries if the user executing the command is a cluster admin.

.show database DatabaseName journal

The .show database DatabaseName journal command returns journal for the specific database metadata changes.

Permissions

Everyone (cluster access) can execute the command. Results returned include:

• All journal entries of database DatabaseName if the user executing the command is a database admin in DatabaseName.
• Otherwise, all the journal entries of database DatabaseName and of the user executing the command.