Just as any modern PHP application Magento stores most of its information in the database (except media and xml configurations). Thus when debugging Magento problems it is useful to know a few things:
1. All MySQL queries can be logged and examined. For this purpose open the file lib/Varien/Db/Adapter/Pdo/Mysql.php and change the value of the protected property $_debug to true. You can also change the value of $_logQueryTime which is especially handy when debugging slowdowns. Once you make this change all queries will be logged in the file var/debug/sql.txt
2. Magento has an useful tool for fixing frequent database problems. This tool requires a working magento installation which database is used as reference for fixing a corrupted one.
Please remember always to backup your Magento database before making any changes to it.
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