DBVERIFY is an external command-line utility that performs a physical data structure integrity check.
DBVERIFY can be used on offline or online databases, as well on backup files. You use DBVERIFY primarily when you need to ensure that a backup database (or data file) is valid before it is restored, or as a diagnostic aid when you have encountered data corruption problems. Because DBVERIFY can be run against an offline database, integrity checks are significantly faster.
DBVERIFY checks are limited to cache-managed blocks (that is, data blocks). Because DBVERIFY is only for use with data files, it does not work against control files or redo logs.
There are two command-line interfaces to DBVERIFY. With the first interface, you specify disk blocks of a single data file for checking. With the second interface, you specify a segment for checking. Both interfaces are started with the dbv command. The following sections provide descriptions of these interfaces: