Matthew McGiffen

I started my career in IT as a developer with Visual Basic, C# and ASP working with SQL Server backends. For the last ten years though I’ve focused on the SQL Server side of things. Currently I’m working for a leading software vendor for the financial industry as a DBA, doing a mixture of development and data architecture. If I have a speciality it is in making things run faster.

All authors

All authors

Blogs

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

By

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

Monday Monitor Tips: SQL Auditing Preview

By

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

By

Microsoft fixed the AVX instruction issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now...

Read the latest Blogs

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...

Visit the forum

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)

See possible answers