Reading recently executed sql statements from WAL in YugabyteDB

Question

[Question posted by a user on YugabyteDB Community Slack]

How can I read the most recently executed sql statement? I think it's useful to analyze executed process. May I read it from wal?

Answer 1

WAL logs changes to the memtable, not statements. And not all statements make changes, and thus WAL cannot be used, even if it would allow reconstructing changes somehow. You can use ysql-log-statement https://docs.yugabyte.com/preview/reference/configuration/yb-tserver/#ysql-log-statement to log some or all queries.

Or using audit logging https://docs.yugabyte.com/preview/secure/audit-logging/.

There are additional features such as viewing pg_stat_activity to see live running queries, as well as using pg_stat_statements to view slow-running queries that might help out. Neither gives you the exact last query but can help you narrow it down.