More about database maintenance

Consistency Check

Note: please refer to SQL Server Books Online for more information regarding this topic.

Consistency check should be performed periodically against your data. If, for some reason, some inconsistency occurs, you would want to know it as soon as possible. Worst case would be to restore the most recent clean backup.

Unfortunately, there have been installations where a corruption was found in the database, but since no consistency checks have ever been run, no clean backup existed. The end to this is generally to try to get the data out from the database (by BCP or other tool) to salvage as much data as possible.

Db Maint will perform the various consistency check commands, DBCC's, (if chosen in the job) and it will log all messages returned from the commands.

It is vital that you act upon an error or warning message as soon as possible. It might not be a problem, but it is best to make sure. See If an error occurs for tips.