Verifying database integrity

The data integrity check tools report whether tables and indexes are corrupted.

To check whether a database is healthy and to troubleshoot database problems, perform a basic check first by using the DBCHECK command. The DBCHECK command checks the general data health, for example, page size, file size, existence of data file and index file. The DBCHECK command does not check the content of the tables, nor does it check encrypted databases.

If a basic check does not help you find the problem, or if synchronization fails with severe errors such as SQLState 58005 and 58004, perform a comprehensive data integrity check. The comprehensive check verifies the integrity of the content of system catalog tables and user tables of both non-encrypted and encrypted databases. If the comprehensive check reports errors after the check, contact IBM software support. You might want to use the comprehensive check before synchronization to prevent client synchronization errors.

Basic check

This tool is available for both DB2® Everyplace® Database Edition and DB2 Everyplace Enterprise Edition.

Restriction: The basic check works on Linux® and Windows® 32-bit operating systems.

Running the DBCHECK command in DB2eCLP checks the data integrity. The command syntax is:

DBCHECK outputfile

The outputfile parameter specifies the name of a text file in the database directory where the tool will write the results. If the file already exists, the tool will overwrite it.

Comprehensive check

This tool is available for DB2 Everyplace Enterprise Edition. The comprehensive check takes longer than the basic check. If the database contains large BLOB files, the comprehensive check will also take longer.

Restriction: The comprehensive check works on Linux and Windows 32-bit operating systems. If the database is encrypted, you must connect to the database with a user ID with encryption privileges.

To run this tool on Windows (32-bit) and Linux:

Open a command window, change to the directory that contains the db2sync_console file and run db2sync_console.
In the DB2 Sync Console, select option 3. Check whether the Path parameter uses an absolute file path. If it uses a relative path, change it to an absolute path. The path must end with \ (backslash) for Windows operating systems, for example, C:\dir\ and .\subdir\ ; and it must end with / (slash) for Linux operating systems, for example, /dir/or ./subdir/.
Specify option 7 to start Data integrity check.

The tool writes the results in a text file in the directory that is specified by the Path parameter.