Notification when something changes in the DB

[Val_Gamerman/Victoria_Financial . VICTORIA_FINANCIAL]

Hello fellow DBAs',

I have a weird question that I was asked. My first reaction was to answer:
"There is no such thing", however I was talked into posting this question
here :-)

1. An applicaiton selects certain records (from different tables) from a
database..

2. When time comes to update some of these records in the datbase
application needs to know if records that it's about to update have been
modified by some other user.

3. Currently this is achieved with via triggers. Before performing an
update application checks if trigger updated a certain field in the
database which serves as an indication that records/fields of interest have
been updated.

For whatever reasons this solutions was found to be not sound by a 3rd
party "consulting" company which reccommended "Oracle native technology"
to perform this check. This company is now unreachable and "management" is
requesting to change the application to follow this "review".

Management explanation of how it needs to be done is based on what ADO
would do where if you perform an optimistoc lock and then later on try to
update an already updated record it would tell you about this upfront., or
you would be able to check upfront WITHOUT requiring the DB.  I am not
familiar with ADO, that much  so I can not comment on it.

Can somebody tell me if they can think of way to achieve this?

I know it sounds rather weird request -- it is.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this,
Val Gamerman.
Oracle DBA


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