David Postlethwaite

David Postlethwaite has been a SQL Server and Oracle DBA since 2008. He now lives and works in Copenhagen supporting databases, Azure, NetApp, security, auditing, mentoring and whatever else his company asks him to work on. In a previous life he was a .NET developer and way back in history a Windows and Netware administrator.

Proposed Sessions for 2026

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Data-Driven Culture

Learn how to build a data-driven culture using practical strategies, strong leadership, and Power BI. Discover the blueprint for overcoming resistance, empowering teams, and transforming how your organisation uses data.

Bridging the Gap: Transforming Tech Friction into Startup Success

Discover how startups can bridge the communication gap between investors and technical teams. This session shows how the Microsoft Startup Hub, Azure AI, and OpenAI enable clearer alignment, faster development, and stronger investor confidence, helping startups accelerate instead of stall.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who can sync their data best of all

Learn how Fabric Mirroring delivers near real-time data for Power BI without overloading your production SQL Server. Discover how to replicate tables safely, reduce query pressure, and improve performance across your organisation.

Moneyball – Build a killer Fantasy Football Team with Power BI

Discover how to use Power BI and FPL data to build a winning Fantasy Premier League team. In this session, we follow Berry’s journey from middling finishes to data-driven decisions, using APIs, PowerShell, modelling, and visuals to uncover real player value.

From Zero to Hero: Accidental SQL Server DBAs Survival Guide

Didn’t choose to be a DBA? This session is your SQL Server survival guide. Learn the essentials of security, backups, maintenance, and troubleshooting so you can stop firefighting and start running SQL Server with confidence.

What you can do to protect your SQL Server and why it matters

How secure is your SQL Server? In this 20-minute session, David and Gethyn explore the CIS Benchmarks for SQL Server, discussing industry-agreed security best practices and helping you assess how well your own environment is protected.

Previous Sessions

What you can do to protect your SQL Server and why it matters

The CIS Benchmarks, from the Centre of Internet Security (CIS), are a set of globally recognized and consensus-driven best practices to help us implement and manage our cybersecurity defences. In this 20-minute session, listen to David and Gethyn discussing these best practices, see if you agree with them, and see how many you have implemented.

Top Five Disasters we've dealt with in our time as DBAs

Come and hear our top five disasters and how we managed them (or not)

I'm a SQL DBA. What do I do with this Oracle database?

This talk sets out to explain some of the terminology, the differences and the similarities between Oracle and SQL Server and hopefully make Oracle not look quite so intimidating.

Dynamic Data Masking in 20 Minutes

In this 20 minute session we will have an overview and demos of Dynamic Data Masking which allows us to obfuscate data in real time