Kenneth Fisher

My name is Kenneth Fisher and I am Senior DBA for a large (multi-national) insurance company. I have been working with databases for over 20 years starting with Clarion and Foxpro. I’ve been working with SQL Server for 12 years but have only really started “studying” the subject for the last 3. I don’t have any real "specialities" but I enjoy trouble shooting and teaching. Thus far I’ve earned by MCITP Database Administrator 2008, MCTS Database Administrator 2005, and MCTS Database Developer 2008. I’m currently studying for my MCITP Database Developer 2008 and should start in on the 2012 exams next year. My blog is at https://sqlstudies.com/.

Finding active DTS packages

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

DTS is dead, long live SSIS. Way back when SQL 2005 was announced then released DTS was pronounced DOA. SSIS...

2013-12-09 (first published: 2013-11-27)

3,177 reads

Undocumented functionality in FORMATMESSAGE

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

I was reading a rather interesting post on stackexchange “Why is % a forbidden char in a THROW message?” (which is...

2013-12-09

1,487 reads

Insert into a table using only default values

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

A while back I talked about the DEFAULT keyword and using it to tell SQL to use the default value...

2013-12-04

1,013 reads

Why do DBAs like to say “It Depends” so much?

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

Well the short answer is that they just don’t have enough information to give a definitive answer. You will notice...

2013-12-02

646 reads

Finding the metadata for a query

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

You know I occasionally find it interesting how I learn new things. I was running through a practice test for...

2013-11-25

2,280 reads

A pattern to do beginning of period calculations.

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

Beginning of period calculations are common things. Rolling month reports, queries to pull everything from last month etc require beginning...

2013-11-20

754 reads

Connection options in SSMS

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

When connecting to a SQL Server instance in SSMS there are a fair number of options. Most DBAs I know...

2013-11-18

1,547 reads

Who’s on call

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

Every morning we have a daily meeting and my manager asks who’s on call. And every morning some form of...

2013-11-13

591 reads

A better way to find missing indexes

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

I recently attended SQL Saturday #255 and specifically the performance tuning pre-con put on by Grant Fritchey. It was a...

2013-11-11

931 reads

sp_SrvPermissions & sp_DBPermissions V3.0

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

These are a couple of stored procedures I wrote to help me with security research. Each sp returns three data...

2013-11-11 (first published: 2013-11-04)

1,852 reads

Blogs

The Benefits of Teaching

By Brian Kelley

Even preparing for a class or seminar with set materials takes a lot of...

Power BI, Excel, OneLake – Dreams Do Come True!

By DataOnWheels

I can’t believe it’s finally here! A way to have Excel live in OneDrive...

The Book of Redgate: What Our Staff Says

This image is from 2010, and it goes along with my last post of...

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Forums

Deny Connect problem

By Brandie Tarvin

I have a login I need to deny connect to on a server, but...

Website Stability 2025/12/05

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

All week we've had issues with the site being up and down. There's been...

403 Forbidden

I created a post (or tried) in the 2022 Admin forum. https://www.sqlservercentral.com/?post_type=topic&p=4694880 But it's...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Fabric Mirroring

In which versions can I mirror a database from an on-premises SQL Server to a Fabric data warehouse?

See possible answers