HuggyBear

Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, with a brief excursion to study in Brussels, Melbourne & Washington D.C., Hugo has been working with SQL Server since 1998. He’s busied himself as a DBA since 1999 (with mcdba & mcitp certifications in ‘01 & ‘08 respectively), as independent consultant with his own company, Intellabase Solutions, since 2002 (now part time), and has held various permanent position with Transcontinental, Sun Life Canada, and now Alithya as a consultant. He enjoys writing documentation for quick, safe infrastructure rebuilds and expansions, and most challengingly, propositions to Executives Management on how to improve enterprise Security. He has spoken at SQLteach/DevTeach, Montreal Dot Net User Group, SQLGulf, Vermont User Groups over 5 times, has a blog on SQLServerCentral, and has been recognised as a SQL Server MVP in 2010.
  • Interests: Lately (2019): windfoiling or windsurfing with a Skroka foil....amongst many other supposedly 'extreme' sports, but which are really just the norm for people raised in Lotusland aka Vancouver, BC, lower-mainland region, Sea-to-Sky country as we know it.
  • Blog: http://dbhive.blogspot.com/
  • Jobs: SQL DBA, Data Engineer, Migrator, Clusterer, Security Implementor

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Blogs

Don’t Miss Out – SQL Server Query Tuning Fundamentals Starts Next Monday!

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

Monday Monitor Tips: SQL Auditing Preview

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One of the features we advocates have been advocating for is a better way...

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...

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Forums

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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