James Serra

James works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last nine years. He is a thought leader in the use and application of Big Data and advanced analytics, including data architectures such as the modern data warehouse, data lakehouse, data fabric, and data mesh. Previously he was an independent consultant working as a Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence architect and developer. He is a prior SQL Server MVP with over 35 years of IT experience. He is a popular blogger (JamesSerra.com) and speaker, having presented at dozens of major events including SQLBits, PASS Summit, Data Summit and the Enterprise Data World conference. He is the author of the book “Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh”.

Blog Post

Azure IoT Operations

I want to talk about a fairly new product that you may not be aware of: Azure IoT Operations, which GA’d last November (it was first announced at Ignite...

2025-09-03 (first published: )

780 reads

Blog Post

Azure SQL offerings

There are three Azure SQL products with so many different deployment options, service tiers, and compute tiers that it can get quite confusing when choosing the right option for...

2025-03-03 (first published: )

1,205 reads

Blog Post

Cool AI sites

As I researched and wrote my OpenAI and LLMs blogs (see Introduction to OpenAI and LLMs, Introduction to OpenAI and LLMs – Part 2 and Introduction to OpenAI and...

2025-02-07 (first published: )

675 reads

Blogs

A New Word: on tenderhooks

By

on tenderhooks – adj. feeling the primal satisfaction of being needed by someone, which...

Ramblings about data communities and your contributions, no excuses

By

I have been active in the data community throughout my career. I have met...

SQL Server Journey till 2025 (brief)

By

Quick Summary for Microsoft SQL Server till 2025, I am fortunate to be part...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Simulating Mercury’s Orbital Motion Using Pure T-SQL (NASA 2025 Dataset)

By NKTgLaw

SQL Server is typically viewed as a transactional or analytical database engine. However, it...

Azure SQL Database | CREATE EVENT SESSION [Blocking_Capture] ON DATABASE

By DanielP

Hello, Is there a way in Azure SQL Database to change the 'Blocking Process...

Having a Little Fun at SQL Server Central

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Having a Little Fun at...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

String Similarity I

On SQL Server 2025, when I run this, what is returned?

SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY('SQL Server', 'MySQL')

See possible answers