steve@thesqlguy.com

I am a Microsoft certified SQL Server expert with over 20 years of experience. Creating secure, reliable, and fast data structures is my passion, and I want to share my expertise with you.

I am passionate about sharing my experience with the community, making information available and seamless to the world. Check out my blog and look for my various articles across the internet.

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SQLServerCentral Article

6 steps to a more secure SQL database

Security is often something people think about only after they have had a problem. Given that the average cost of a data breach is $3.92 million (SecurityIntelligence 2019) and ransomware attacks have increased 97% over the past 2 years (PhishMe 2019), the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" approach can clearly be catastrophic. Here […]

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2019-10-07

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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) 

See possible answers