Tracy McKibben

My real name is Tracy McKibben. I’ve been working with database products for over 20 years, starting with FoxBase running on Xenix. Over the years, I’ve worked with all flavors of FoxPro, some Clipper and dBase, and starting somewhere around 1995, SQL Server. I’ve even dabbled with Oracle, though I’ve tried to block out all memories of that experience.

At present, I’m the Senior SQL Server DBA and the DBA Team Supervisor for Pearson VUE. All opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not reflect the opinions of Pearson VUE.

Interests: Tech, gadgets, model railroading, photography, and of course SQL Server!

Transparent Data Encryption’s Dirty Little Secret

by Tracy McKibben

RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero

Remember when you were eight years old, how exciting it was to order some of those amazing products that were...

2013-11-07

932 reads

Do You Need A Log Recovery Tool?

by Tracy McKibben

RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post dispelling the myth that the simple recovery model disables the transaction...

2013-11-04

942 reads

sp_BackupDatabases v1.2

by Tracy McKibben

RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero

I just posted a new version of sp_BackupDatabases. The biggest change is that the procedure now creates one-time SQL Agent...

2013-10-29

1,620 reads

What’s In My Utility Belt? Issue #1

by Tracy McKibben

RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero

Welcome to the first issue of what I hope will become a monthly series called “What’s In My Utility Belt?”....

2013-10-29

552 reads

SQL Query Formatting – Putting Lipstick On A Pig

by Tracy McKibben

RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero

“Psssst….”
“Hey buddy! Yeah, you there in the propeller hat. You’re a SQL nerd, right? Can you help me tune this...

2013-10-24

912 reads

No, Simple Mode Doesn’t Disable The Transaction Log

by Tracy McKibben

RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero

If you’ve spent any time with me in person, trading war stories, you’ve likely heard my rant about the consultant...

2013-10-21

6,260 reads

One-stop Shopping for Backups

by Tracy McKibben

RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero

First, let me say that yes, I’m aware of Ola Hallengren’s excellent set of maintenance scripts, including those for doing...

2013-10-05

380 reads

New Blog Series – Origins

by Tracy McKibben

RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero

I’ve been struggling for months to bring this blog back to life. I’d love to produce content dedicated to the...

2013-10-02

428 reads

Using A Non-correlated Subquery To Avoid DISTINCT

by Tracy McKibben

RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero

Nobody wants duplicate data. It’s messy, wastes space, and looks really bad on a report – I get that. What I...

2013-10-02

1,319 reads

Blogs

SQL Server instance metadata inventory with PowerShell and SMO

SQL Server instance metadata inventory with PowerShell and SMO The purpose...

5 SQL Tricks Worth Remembering Before You Close the Laptop

By Eduardo Pivaral

Disclosure: this post may contain links to books as an affiliate link. If you...

Claude Context Window

Every Claude conversation has a context window. It is the total amount of text...

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Forums

Celebrating 30 years of PostgreSQL, A Thank you message

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Celebrating 30 years of PostgreSQL,...

provisioning sql server via VMware Cloud Foundation

By andreas.kreuzberg

Hello, has anyone here ever provisioned and actually used an MS SQL Server with...

No More Deadlocks

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item No More Deadlocks

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Question of the Day

No More Deadlocks

After detecting deadlocks in SQL Server 2025 and lowering the time threshold for detecting future issues, when does the Database Engine return to the 5s default interval?

See possible answers