Help:Database integrity

From ADAM - Academic Data Management for Schools

When a system administrator logs into ADAM, they may see the message Your database reports some integrity problems. Database upgrades were skipped.

This message is triggered when a system administrator logs into ADAM. ADAM checks the structural integrity of the database to ensure that the database has not suffered any corruption before any substantial changes are made. Database integrity issues normally arise after a power failure or sudden shutdown of the computer on which ADAM is running. This sudden shutdown prevents the database from committing the last few changes in its memory to disk. Sometimes, the data that is written to disk can be corrupted too.

MySQL offers a table repair function which can solve these structural issues. However, it does not attempt this automatically because it potentially could result in lost data.

Other methods of notification

• The integrity status is also included in the daily Ping sent by the server.
• Backups made with a compromised database will contain the text _dbi at the end of the backup name. This will indicate to you that the backup is possibly corrupted.

Important

Note that the database repair, a MySQL function, is generally considered safe but that its level of success may vary. Certainly, we do not offer any guarantees about its efficacy. Our experience has shown it to be a very acceptable solution.

That having been said, there are very few occurrences where the repair functionality has been used and it has lost any data. At the point where MySQL indicates problems with tables, the backups that it generates are also potentially compromised.

Solving database integrity issues

Only the system administrator can resolve the issues.

In order to do so, look on the Administration tab in the Database Administration heading and click on the menu item Repair database integrity issues. The database tables will then be repaired and optimised.