Brad McGehee

Brad M. McGehee is a MCSE+I, MCSD, and MCT (former) with a Bachelors’ degree in Economics and a Masters in Business Administration. Currently the Director of DBA Education for Red Gate Software, Brad is an accomplished Microsoft SQL Server MVP with over 13 years’ SQL Server experience, and over 6 years’ training experience.

Brad is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, SQL Connections, SQLTeach, SQL Saturdays, TechFests, Code Camps, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars, where he shares his 13 years’ cumulative knowledge.

Brad was the founder of the popular community site SQL-Server-Performance.Com, and operated it from 2000 through 2006, where he wrote over one million words on SQL Server topics.

In 2008, Brad attended 16 conferences/user group events, presented 26 sessions, and had 1,402 people attend them.

A well-respected and trusted name in SQL Server literature, Brad is the author or co-author of more than 14 technical books and over 100 published articles. His most recent books include “How to Become an Exceptional DBA,” and “Brad's Sure Guide to SQL Server 2008: The Top Ten New Features for DBAs,” and “Mastering SQL Server Profiler.”

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AWS recently added support for Post-Quantum Key Exchange for TLS in Application Load Balancer...

Plan your 2026

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If you don't have a plan, you'll accomplish it. That's not a good thing.

Another Change

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Today Redgate announced that we are partnering with Bregal Sagemount, a growth-focused private equity...

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Where Your Value Separates You from Others

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Where Your Value Separates You...

Fixing the Error

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing the Error

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Encoding Functions

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...

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Question of the Day

Fixing the Error

On SQL Server 2025, I have a database that has this collation: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. I decide I want to run this code: 

SELECT UNISTR('*3041*308A*304C*3068 and good night', '*') AS 'A Classic';
I get this error:Msg 9844, Level 16, State 4, Line 24 The char/varchar input type uses an unsupported collation. Only a UTF8 collation is supported with char/varchar input type in UNISTR function.What is the easiest way to fix this error?

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