About the Author

Basit A. Masood-Al-Farooq is an internationally known Lead SQL DBA, trainer, and technical author with twelve years' experience of the Microsoft technology stack. He is an accomplished development and production SQL Server DBA with a proven record of delivering major projects on time and within budget. He is an expert at evaluating the clients' needs against the capabilities of the SQL Server product set, with the objective of minimizing costs and maximizing functions by making innovative use of advance capabilities. Basit has authored numerous SQL Server technical articles on various SQL Server topics for different SQL Server community sites, which include SQLMag.com, MSSQLTips.com, SQLServerCentral.com, SSWUG.org, SQL-Server-Performance.com, and SearchSQLServer.com.

He has also developed and implemented many successful database infrastructures, data warehouses, and business intelligence projects. He holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from London Metropolitan University and industry-standard certifications from Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, Brainbench, ProSoft, and APM, which include MCITP Database Administrator 2008, MCITP Database Administrator 2005, MCDBA SQL Server 2000 and MCTS .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications. He also has a good understanding of ITIL principles.

He can be reached via Twitter (@BasitAali), his blog (http://basitaalishan.com), or via LinkedIn (http://uk.linkedin.com/in/basitfarooq).

He was a technical reviewer for SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Blueprints, Marlon Ribunal and Mickey Stuewe, Packt Publishing and Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server 2012, James Serra and Bill Anton, Packt Publishing.