Kenneth Fisher

My name is Kenneth Fisher and I am Senior DBA for a large (multi-national) insurance company. I have been working with databases for over 20 years starting with Clarion and Foxpro. I’ve been working with SQL Server for 12 years but have only really started “studying” the subject for the last 3. I don’t have any real "specialities" but I enjoy trouble shooting and teaching. Thus far I’ve earned by MCITP Database Administrator 2008, MCTS Database Administrator 2005, and MCTS Database Developer 2008. I’m currently studying for my MCITP Database Developer 2008 and should start in on the 2012 exams next year. My blog is at https://sqlstudies.com/.

Disaster Recovery’s big brother Operational Recovery

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

I’m going to get slammed for the title by someone but I stand by it. First some definitions.
Disaster Recovery...

2013-06-20

940 reads

ORDER BY the numbers

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

Have you ever needed to order by a calculated column? You might have written it something like this:
SELECT LoginID, YEAR(HireDate)...

2013-06-19 (first published: 2013-06-17)

2,779 reads

Best practice recommendations for writing Dynamic SQL

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

Note this is not “Best Practices when USING Dynamic SQL”. These are just good habits I’ve come up with over...

2013-06-13 (first published: 2013-06-12)

5,585 reads

Using the OVER clause

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

Over the last few years I’ve learned quite a bit about different techniques in SQL Server. This particular one has...

2013-06-10

683 reads

Backup a password, change it, then restore it.

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

A couple of months ago I talked about moving a login from one server to another without the password. The...

2013-06-05 (first published: 2013-05-30)

2,339 reads

Easy way to generate a restore script.

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

Easy way to generate a restore script.
I was asked today if I had a canned restore script handy. I don’t....

2013-06-05

996 reads

Pattern searches beyond ‘%string%’.

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

I was asked today to take a table with a social security column and put all 0s if the column...

2013-06-03

905 reads

Using CROSS APPLY to calculate an aggregate across a single row.

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

I’ve had CROSS APPLY on the mind recently. You could probably tell since its been the subject of my last...

2013-05-28

1,468 reads

The many uses of CROSS APPLY

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

Over the last few years of studying SQL I’ve noticed 4 different uses for the command CROSS APPLY.
In the first...

2013-05-23 (first published: 2013-05-20)

21,508 reads

Using CROSS APPLY instead of a calculated variable

by Kenneth Fisher

SQLStudies

Earlier this week I posted The many uses of CROSS APPLY and I’m quite glad I did. I’ve been working...

2013-05-22

871 reads

Blogs

Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency

As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...

March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates

By Brian Kelley

On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...

How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025

By Meagan Longoria

When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...

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Forums

Multiple Deployment Processes

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes

How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases

Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...

Upgrading Admin Queries

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Upgrading Admin Queries

I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?

See possible answers