3 ways to have fun with DBCC PAGE

A very useful tool is DBCC PAGE. It is used to view database page contents

The basic syntax is :

dbcc page ( {‘dbname’ | dbid}, filenum, pagenum [, printopt={0|1|2|3} ])

Officially it is an undocumented command. But it’s been around for awhile and there is great information across forums and other blogs discussing techniques using DBCC PAGE. It is heavily used in database corruption troubleshooting and storage layer analysis

Here are 3 ways I’ve used DBCC PAGE recently. But there is a wealth of information available , which can be explored

To view the output from DBCC PAGE you'll need to run : DBCC TRACEON(3604)

Find last known good DBCC CHECKDB

dbcc page ('master',1,9,3)

Read more Why is SQL Server executing DBCC CHECKDB against my database at startup?

View Page Free Space (PFS) pages.

SQL Server uses PFS pages to track the amount of space still available on each page

DBCC PAGE (master, 1, 1, 3);

View what’s on a page

--get PagePID

DBCC IND('Master','tRoleMember',1)

dbcc page ('master',1,460,2)

Hours of fun and a great way to start exploring and learning about SQL internals