Thom Andrews

"Database Administrator" for a small Insurance Broker in England.

I use the quotes as, being a small business, although my role is called Database Administrator, you often need to be a jack of all trades for small companies. As a result I have exposure to Network Administration, Web Development, and some server maintenance (mainly the Ubuntu servers at the office); so although I'm not trained I've had to assist enough times to know what I'm looking for or at (which greatly helps when a problem isn't SQL Server based).

SQL Server enthusiast, however, little to no experience on with any other RDBMS. Linux and Windows user, with VB.Net experience, and enjoy to dabble in PoSH and Bash. I can read C#, it is a .Net language after all, but I'm hopeless at writing it; for some reason it's always escaped my grasp. I can't even blame it on the compulsory semi-colons as (one day) they'll be compulsory in T-SQL too (bring it on SQL Server 2037!).

Blogs

Learn Better: Pause to Review More

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If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.

Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS

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If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...

SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data

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Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...

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Forums

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High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?

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Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...

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Question of the Day

Encoding URLs

I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:

CREATE TABLE Response
( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY
, ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000)
)
GO
If I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use?

See possible answers