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Microsoft SQL Server · Netherlands & Belgium · remote worldwide

Your SQL Server problem, handled by the specialist himself.

I am Danny Riebeek. I have worked on Microsoft SQL Server since 1993, starting with version 4.21, founded DatabaseOnline in 2001 and built SQLTreeo, the SSMS add-in used by database teams worldwide. When you engage SQLServerSpecialist.nl you get me: no account manager, no junior, no ticket queue.

Book a 30-minute call What I do
  • Senior SQL Server DBA and architect, hands-on since SQL Server 4.21 in 1993
  • Founder of DatabaseOnline and the engineer behind SQLTreeo
  • Fixed-price health check first, then a plan with effort estimates. No surprises.

When people call me

Six sentences I hear on the first call

If one of these sounds like your week, we should talk. Each one links to what I do about it.

Services

Everything Microsoft SQL Server, from one pair of hands

Six things I do well, delivered by me personally on a fixed price or a day rate agreed after the first call. Measured before and after.

  • 01

    Performance tuning

    Wait statistics, execution plans, indexing, statistics, tempdb, memory and I/O. Measured before and after, so you know what you paid for.

    More
  • 02

    High availability & DR

    Always On availability groups, failover cluster instances, log shipping. Designed, built and tested, with a documented failover runbook.

    More
  • 03

    Upgrades & migrations

    SQL Server 2008 through 2025, on-premises to Azure SQL, Managed Instance or VMs. Compatibility testing, rollback plan, minimal downtime.

    More
  • 04

    Security & compliance

    Encryption, Dynamic Data Masking, row-level security, auditing and least-privilege access for GDPR, ISO 27001 and HIPAA questions.

    More
  • 05

    Architecture & design

    Data models, partitioning, replication and integration designs that scale with the business instead of against it.

    More
  • 06

    Remote DBA & monitoring

    Backups, patching, capacity, jobs and index maintenance handled by a senior DBA. 24x7x365 monitoring through DatabaseOnline.

    More

How I work

Measure, fix, prove, hand over

No slide decks. Every engagement follows the same five steps, and you see the numbers at each one.

  1. A 30-minute call

    Free and technical. You describe the symptom, I ask the questions a DBA asks. If I am not the right person for it, I say so and tell you who is.

  2. Assessment

    A health check or a targeted analysis with read-only access. You receive a written report with findings in priority order and an effort estimate per fix.

  3. A plan you can budget

    Fixed price or day rate, agreed in writing before work starts. Nothing changes on production without a logged reason and a rollback.

  4. Execute and measure

    Before-and-after figures for every change: wait time, duration, CPU, failover time. Proof, not opinion.

  5. Hand over or keep watching

    Documentation your own team can work with. Or a retainer and 24x7x365 monitoring through DatabaseOnline, if you would rather I keep an eye on it.

Danny Riebeek
Danny RiebeekMicrosoft SQL Server DBA and architect. Founder of DatabaseOnline, engineer behind SQLTreeo.

The specialist

More than thirty years of SQL Server, and still on call

“Depth beats breadth when production is down. I chose depth in 1993 and never regretted it.”

Danny Riebeek started working with Microsoft SQL Server in 1993, on version 4.21 for Windows NT, when most estates were a single server under a desk. He founded DatabaseOnline in 2001 to be the company organisations call when the database is the problem, and has led its SQL Server practice ever since.

Along the way he built SQLTreeo, the SQL Server Management Studio add-in that gives DBAs worldwide virtual folders and schema comparison, because he needed it himself on customer servers. He holds Microsoft Azure certification, writes for the SQL Server community and still takes on-call shifts for monitoring customers.

SQLServerSpecialist.nl is the direct line to him: one senior specialist for organisations that want the person who has done this before, not a bench.

  • SQL Server 4.21 to 2025
  • Azure SQL & Managed Instance
  • Always On
  • Performance tuning
  • T-SQL
  • .NET / C#
  • SSMS tooling (SQLTreeo)
Read the full profile

Results

What it looks like when it works

Two engagements, anonymised at the customer's request. References for both are available in a call.

LogisticsNetherlands38 SQL Server instances

Warehouse picking stopped twice a week. Blocking was the reason, nobody was watching.

Situation
A WMS on SQL Server 2016 with nightly blocking chains, log backups that had silently failed for weeks and no DBA on staff since the previous one left.
What was done
Health check in week one. Read Committed Snapshot Isolation, index fixes and an Always On availability group for the WMS in weeks two to six. Monitoring from day one, so the on-call DBA saw the next chain before the warehouse floor did.
  • 9 → 0blocking incidents per month affecting picking
  • 25 minplanned downtime for the WMS cut-over to Always On
  • 0log backup gaps since go-live, verified nightly
"For the first time the database team calls us before the warehouse does."IT manager, logistics group

Software vendorInternationalMulti-tenant SQL Server 2019

One tenant's month-end report slowed every other customer down.

Situation
A multi-tenant SaaS platform where a reporting query from the largest tenant pushed CPU to 100% at every month-end. The vendor was about to order a bigger server.
What was done
Wait-statistics baseline and execution plan analysis, three covering indexes and a rewritten aggregation, Resource Governor to cap reporting workloads, and a capacity model instead of a hardware order.
  • 41 → 1 minmonth-end report duration for the largest tenant
  • 0servers bought; the existing one has headroom again
  • 2 daysengagement, remote, measured before and after
"We were about to spend on hardware to fix a query."CTO, software vendor

Questions

Before you book

What does the first call cost?

Nothing. Thirty minutes on Teams, technical, no sales pitch. You leave it with an opinion about what is wrong and what it would take to fix. If it needs more than an opinion, you receive a written proposal afterwards.

Do you work on-site or remote?

Both. On-site across the Netherlands and Belgium from Roosendaal; remote anywhere in the world over your VPN or a screen share. Most performance and migration work is done remotely, with on-site days where a room full of stakeholders helps.

Which SQL Server versions and platforms do you support?

SQL Server 2008 R2 through SQL Server 2025 on Windows and Linux, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on Azure virtual machines. Older versions usually come up in the context of an upgrade, which is fine.

Are you available outside office hours?

For planned work such as cut-overs and failover tests, yes. For unplanned incidents, 24x7x365 cover is delivered through DatabaseOnline's monitoring service with on-call DBAs, of which I am one.

What is the relationship with DatabaseOnline?

SQLServerSpecialist.nl is a brand of Databaseonline B.V., the company I founded in 2001. Databaseonline B.V. is your contracting party and issues the invoices; the work is done by me.

Do you also cover PostgreSQL, Oracle or MySQL?

I give independent advice on when to migrate and when not to, and I have worked alongside all of them. The hands-on specialism is Microsoft SQL Server. For deep work on another platform I will tell you that and point you to someone who does it every day.

Start a conversation

Pick a slot in my agenda. Bring the symptoms.

A first call of 30 minutes is free and technical. You leave it with an opinion about what is wrong and what it would take to fix.

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