Kevin3NF

Kevin Hill is a career SQL Server DBA living in Dallas, TX. His specialities include HA/DR, Best Practice configuration, Performance tuning and teaching new and accidental DBAs
  • Interests: Cycling, family, sci-fi, DBA stuff

Blog Post

SQL Server Wait Stats

Everything in SQL Server is waiting for something…this is by design. And most people never think about it… Until your application is waiting to complete its request, sell the...

2025-04-30 (first published: )

386 reads

Blog Post

The Cost of Not Having a DBA

Does skipping a DBA save money? Wait until your system grinds to a halt, your backups fail, or your cloud bill skyrockets. The “DBA? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’...

2025-04-14 (first published: )

594 reads

Blog Post

SQL Server Time Bombs

Common Reasons for Emergency SQL calls If you are a production DBA (or Accidental prod DBA) you’ve gotten that frantic call in the middle of the night. Or maybe...

2025-03-12 (first published: )

546 reads

Blog Post

Top 10 Careers in Data

Would you re-order these? Machine Learning Engineer $$$$$ Develop and deploy AI models Optimize machine learning algorithms for efficiency Work with big data frameworks to process large datasets Data...

2025-02-28 (first published: )

328 reads

Blog Post

3rd Party Applications Have Issues

As a SQL DBA, what do you do when a vendor application has performance problems that are code related? Server settings don’t generally seem to be an issue. Queries...

2024-05-20 (first published: )

191 reads

Blogs

Using Prompt AI for a Travel Data Analysis

By

I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...

FinOps for Kubernetes: Leveraging OpenCost, KubeGreen, and Kubecost for Cost Efficiency

By

In the era of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes has become the default standard platform for...

2025 Wrapped for Steve

By

I’ve often done some analysis of my year in different ways. Last year I...

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Forums

Database file shrink issue.

By Tac11

Hi experts, I have a 3+ TB database on a 2019 sql server which...

The North Star for the Year

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The North Star for the...

Multiple Escape Characters

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Escape Characters

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Question of the Day

Multiple Escape Characters

In SQL Server 2025, I run this code (in a database with the appropriate collation):

SELECT UNISTR('%*3041%*308A%*304C%*3068 and good night', '%*') AS 'A Classic';
What is returned?

See possible answers