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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Blogs

SQL Server 2025 CU1 Fixes the Docker Desktop AVX Issue on macOS

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Microsoft fixed the AVX instruction issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now...

Advice I Like: Ranch Rules

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Leave a gate behind you the way you first found it. – from Excellent...

Fix Slow, Bloated MSDB: Purge Old History And Add Missing Indexes

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Fix Slow, Bloated MSDB: Purge Old History And Add Missing Indexes ...

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25 Years of SQL Server Central

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years of SQL Server...

The Decoded Value

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition in Kubernetes: A Cost-Effective Alternative to RDS

By Sujai Krishna

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition...

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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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