Week 5 Database Corruption Challenge

Welcome to the fifth of 10 weeks of the Database Corruption Challenge (DBCC), this is the fifth in an about weekly competition. Here is how it works; I have created a corrupt database, hopefully more corrupt or more challenging than the previous week. I then solved the corruption myself, in order to prove that it is possible to fix, without data loss. This week it is possible with no data loss.

Next I post the challenge including the database download and announce it. Those who subscribe to my newsletter will get advance notice to know when it is going to be posted.

For those who competed in any of the previous events, may recognize the database, however the data it contains is very different.

The challenge will be to download the corrupt database and attempt to recover it. If you can recover it, please send me the steps you used to recover the database, along with some proof that the database has been recovered. The goal each week will be the following:

Recover the database to your best ability.
You need to be able to bring the database online and run queries against it.
For any corruption that causes data loss, you need to figure out how to restore as much of the missing data with what you have been given.

Now, let’s get started with the Week 5 Corruption Challenge Details.

Mail your results to before Saturday at 8:00pm pacific time. Results will be posted soon after that. I will be at SQL Saturday in Redmond WA on Saturday, so don’t expect the final results and final judging to be completed until sometime on Sunday.

Good luck and let the games begin…

Winners:

This week the first winning solution that included the steps to solve the problem, with all the details was submitted by Patrick Flynn. Great work Patrick!! The solution was submitted 2 hours and 55 minutes after the challenge started.

Winner #1 – Patrick Flynn