From Oracle Ver. 9i Oracle has introduced Flashback Query feature. It is useful to recover from accidental statement failures. For example, suppose a user accidently deletes rows from a table and commits it also then, using flash back query he can get back the rows.
Flashback feature depends upon on how much undo retention time you have specified. If you have set the UNDO_RETENTION parameter to 2 hours then, Oracle will not overwrite the data in undo tablespace even after committing until 2 Hours have passed. Users can recover from their mistakes made since last 2 hours only.
For example, suppose John gives a delete statement at 10 AM and commits it. After 1 hour he realizes that delete statement is mistakenly performed. Now he can give a flashback AS.. OF query to get back the deleted rows like this.
Flashback Query
SQL>select * from emp as of timestamp sysdate-1/24;
Or
SQL> SELECT * FROM emp AS OF TIMESTAMP
TO_TIMESTAMP('2007-06-07 10:00:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS')
