About Me
SQL Server DBA. 25 years. I’ve spent most of that keeping production databases fast, stable, and out of the news.
My career has taken me through publishing, financial services, and some large-scale government work — including the NHS Mail project. Different industries with different problems but the same basic truth: the data is always more complicated than anyone told you at the start.
These days I’m a Database Solutions Engineer at a finance company, working closely with development teams on performance, query optimisation, and getting involved in design decisions early — because a good conversation at the start of a project is worth a lot more than a crisis call six months later.
Beyond the typical core DBA work I’ve picked up Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Databricks, Data Factory, and Python. I run a home lab — Ubuntu Server VMs on VMware, Technitium for DNS — partly out of curiosity, partly because I learn things by breaking them first.
About My Blog
SeriouslySQL is where I write about what I use (or have used) and what I’ve learnt, usually the hard way.
You’ll find in-depth SQL Server posts, practical how-to guides from my own lab, SQL Shorts — quick scripts with just enough explanation to make them useful — and the occasional opinion piece when something in the industry needs saying.
If I write about it, I’ve done it, broken it, or fixed it.
The Tech Stack
The blog runs on Astro, deployed via GitHub to Cloudflare Pages. Posts are written in Markdown in VS Code, allowing me to spend my time writing rather than updating plugins and security.
In the lab: Ubuntu Server 22.04 VMs on VMware, Technitium handling DNS and SQL Server on Windows. Next on my list is SQL Server on Linux.
Certifications
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300)
- Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)
- Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900)
- PCAP – Certified Associate in Python Programming
- PCEP – Certified Entry-Level Python Programmer
Get in Touch
Got a question, spotted a mistake, or just want to talk databases — find me on LinkedIn and X, or drop me an email. Links are in the footer.