A stream object records data manipulation language (DML) changes made to tables, including inserts, updates, and deletes, as well as metadata about each change, so that actions can be taken using the changed data. This process is referred to as change data capture (CDC). An individual table stream tracks the changes made to rows in a source table. A table stream (also referred to as simply a ''stream'') makes a ''change table'' available of what changed, at the row level, between two transactional points of time in a table. This allows querying and consuming a sequence of change records in a transactional fashion.

Streams can be created to query change data on the following objects:

* Standard tables, including shared tables.

* Views, including secure views

* Directory tables

* Event tables