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

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: )

331 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: )

192 reads

Blog Post

Degrees and Trade Schools

Can we normalize a couple of things? 1 – Trade Schools. Back in the 80’s trade classes in high school and post high school were frowned upon, or looked...

2024-05-08

29 reads

Blog Post

Set-Based vs Row-Based Database Code

In SQL Server, the terms “set-based” and “row-based” refer to different approaches or styles of writing SQL code to manipulate data. These styles have implications for performance, readability, and...

2023-12-18 (first published: )

604 reads

Blog Post

Database Concerns – A Poll!

What are you most concerned about in your database platforms? Please pick from the list below, and expand on your choice in the comments if you like:   Thanks...

2023-11-08 (first published: )

221 reads

Blog Post

IRL #8: SQL Server Down

Problem: My PocketDBA® client called in with a non-responsive SQL Server. Application errors, timeout, alerts firing. SQL Server box is up, and the services are running. Background: This is...

2023-09-06

36 reads

Blog Post

SQL Server is not a Car

Lets compare them anyway, just for fun. Both have an engine Both have a monitoring device (Dashboard/Activity Monitor) Both need power (Gas/Electricity) Both need to be told what do...

2023-09-05

36 reads

Blogs

Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency

By

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

March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates

By

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

How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025

By

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

Read the latest Blogs

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

By Kunal Rathi

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