A soft fault is an inconsistency in Adaptive Server that is usually not persistent. Most soft faults result from temporary inconsistencies in the target database caused by user updates to the database during dbcc checkstorage or when dbcc checkstorage encounters data definition language (DDL) commands. These faults are not repeated when you run the command a second time. You can reclassify soft faults by comparing the results of the two executions of dbcc checkstorage or by running dbcc tablealloc and dbcc checktable after dbcc checkstorage finds soft faults.
If the same soft faults occur in successive executions of dbcc checkstorage, they are “persistent” soft faults, and may indicate a corruption. If you execute dbcc checkstorage in single-user mode, the soft faults reported are “persistent” soft faults. You can resolve these faults by using sp_dbcc_differentialreport or by running dbcc tablealloc and dbcc checktable. If you use the latter two commands, you need to check only the tables or indexes that exhibited the soft faults.
