My name is Andrew Fenna, and I am a database developer at The Laterooms Group. I have written this blog to educate my fellow database developers in subjects that I think are necessary to keep at the top of our game. I have been working with RDBMS’s since 2002 and I have worked within financial, gaming, public, and travel sectors within the Northwest of England. I have gained quite a lot of experience throughout my journey and have tackled some very difficult challenges along the way. Therefore, I am blogging my experiences, which I hope will give you the inspiration to try and tackle problems that are deemed impossible to start, but with some encouragement and guidance become much more simpler and structured, thank you for your time. Andrew J Fenna.

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Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...

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25 Years of SQL Server Central

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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The Decoded Value

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Decoded Value

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By Sujai Krishna

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Question of the Day

The Decoded Value

In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code: 

DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!';
DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX);

SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000)));
SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded)

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