Brian Kelley

Brian Kelley is an author, columnist, and Microsoft SQL Server MVP focusing primarily on SQL Server security. He is a contributing author for How to Cheat at Securing SQL Server 2005 (Syngress), Professional SQL Server 2008 Administration (Wrox), and Introduction to SQL Server (Texas Publishing). Brian currently serves as an infrastructure and security architect. He has also served as a senior Microsoft SQL Server DBA, database architect, developer, and incident response team lead.
  • Interests: Chess, Reading, Soccer (Football), Baseball, Animals, Theology

SQLServerCentral Article

SQL Server Security: Security Admins

As we mentioned before, Brian will be writing a column covering all facets of security. Turns out that there is so much to cover, he has agreed to write two columns per month! This article talks about the principle least privilege, why it doesn't always work, and some good info about removing the Builtin\Admin account.

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2003-06-27

21,155 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

SQL Server Security: The db_executor Role

Brian will be writing a monthly column for us on SQL Security, definitely a hot topic these days! He starts off by discussing the need for a built in db_executor role and how to grant permissions manually to achieve the same effect. Terrific concept, as granting table access can lead to bad things! If there is a security topic you'd like to see more info on, post a note to the article or email us at articles@sqlservercentral.com.

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2003-05-16

41,378 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

A Normalization Primer

For most DBAs, normalization is an understood concept, a bread and butter bit of knowledge. However, it is not at all unusual to review a database design by a development group for an OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) environment and find that the schema chosen is anything but properly normalized. This article by Brian Kelley will give you the core knowledge to data model.

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2003-01-13

18,768 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Information Schema Views

SQL Server DBAs are often curious about the inner-workings of SQL Server. Indeed, it can save your job during disasters to know what's going on inside SQL Server. This article shows you how to use some of the SQL Server internal views to view some meta data about your servers.

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2002-01-09

17,598 reads

Technical Article

Report Locking on Specific Database

This Script reports locking on a particular database either to the console or to a database table. It also allows filtering based on a minimum locking level (say Page or Table and higher). Included is the CREATE TABLE statement to build the reporting table. This table can reside in any database but needs to be […]

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2002-01-06

1,035 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Design Oversight - Preliminary Review

We all know what the ideal application design environment is for building a database back-end: an experienced DBA takes inputs from end users and developers and creates the database design in order to support the application being developed. But in reality, we don't get the opportunity to do application design like this very often. This article covers how to quickly find and fix problems in a design.

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2001-08-20

8,221 reads

Blogs

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Backing Up a DMK

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The Quiet Part

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BIT_COUNT in SQL Server

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Question of the Day

Backing Up a DMK

In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?

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