Permanent Journal The purpose of a permanent journal is to maintain a sequential history of all changes made to the rows of one or more tables. Permanent journals help protect user data when users commit, uncommit or abort transactions. A permanent journal can capture a snapshot of rows before a change, after a change, or both. You use permanent journaling to protect data. Unlike the automatic journal, the contents of a permanent journal remain until you drop them. When you create a new journal table, you can use several options to control the type of information to be captured. You create permanent journals when you create a user or database. To create permanent journals within an existing user or database, use the MODIFY statement. Users activate permanent journaling by including the JOURNAL option in the CREATE or MODIFY statements for users or databases. You must allocate sufficient permanent space to a database or user that will contain permanent journals. If a database or