checkmarkIT

Stephen Wild is the technical director for Checkmark IT. Stephen has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry and is an HPE Master Accredited Solutions Expert (MASE).

Stephen began his career at a second-hand refurbished computer company, where he assisted with sales and fixing basic Windows issues while also rebuilding and repairing computer equipment before moving to account management and becoming a technical account manager.

Following four years in account management roles, he moved into a pre-sales role aligned to the company’s commercial division, focusing on storage - which became his area of specialism - particularly around 3PAR mid-range and high-end 10K and 20K systems.

One of the most significant projects Stephen has worked on during his career is the Transport for London 10K 3PAR system, designed to help measure passenger numbers during the London 2012 Olympic Games. During this project, he designed and scoped the array to address the business needs and capacity required by the customer, alongside HPE.

SQLServerCentral Article

All flash vs adaptive flash storage - which is right for my organisation?

Many data professionals might not worry about hardware, but someone needs to watch for changes and improvements in technology. Learn about how flash storage technology has changed and how this might be useful if you still need to build a fast database server.

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2019-06-25

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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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