Prakash Heda

Prakash Heda works as Sr. Database Administrator at Advent Software. His expertise includes Performance Tuning/Troubleshooting, high availability, SAN configuration and windows administration. He has 13+ years of experience managing enterprise-wide data needs in both high volume transactional and data warehouse environments. Prakash holds certifications for MCDBA and MCITP. His background includes administration & development using VB/ASP/SSIS using SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008/R2 and SQL server 2012. He is an active member of PASS, SQL Saturday. He’s a frequent presenter at user groups, SQL Saturdays, and other community events. He is also an avid tweeter, blogger and runner.
  • Interests: Computers, Chess, Reading

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PowerPoint to HTML with Claude AI

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I had an idea for an animated view of a sales tool, and started...

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...

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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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