If we have InnoDB pages there are two ways to learn how many records they contain:

• PAGE_N_RECS field in the page header
• Count records while walking over the list of records from infimum to supremum

In some previous revision of the recovery tool a short summary was added to a dump which is produced by the constraints_parser.

But if a page is lost and page_parser hasn’t found it, all records from this page are lost. In other words per-page recovery statistics gives us little idea about whether or not a recovered table is complete.

To cover this flaw a new tool index_check is introduced in …

To recover a dropped or corrupt table with Percona Data Recovery Tool for InnoDB you need two things: media with records(ibdata1, *.ibd, disk image, etc.) and a table structure. Indeed, there is no information about the table structure in an InnoDB page. Normally we either recover the structure from .frm files or take it from some old backup.

A new tool sys_parser can recover the table structure from InnoDB dictionary.

Why do we need a new tool anyway? It is absolutely critical to have an accurate table definition to ensure a successful recovery. Even an unnoticeable difference like NULL or NOT NULL can shift all values by a byte and thus will spoil the result. That’s why I prefer the structure from .frm …