I don't see why you'd be inclined to get checkpoint information..or what you'd even do with it! Esp. since Oracle does NOT flush buffers to disk immediately upon issuing a checkpoint anymore (it does it in what is known as a 'lazy' fashion now). It used to be the case..but not anymore.

In anycase, I don't know of a way to get the information without looking at the alertlog. But yes, I can tell you a way to get the information from the database by accessing the alertlog in the background. Use the DBMS_LOB package. Modify this code appropriately. http://www.dbasupport.com/oracle/ora9i/alert_log2.shtml

It'll do the job.