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

Microsoft Purview GA menu’s

The new data governance features in Microsoft Purview are now being made generally available as they are gradually rolled out across various regions. You can view the deployment schedule...

2024-10-02 (first published: )

158 reads

Blog Post

Microsoft Purview FAQ

I get many of the same questions about Microsoft Purview, so I wanted to list those common questions here along with their answers. If your question is not answered...

2024-09-23 (first published: )

237 reads

Blog Post

Microsoft Fabric AI Skill

Are you ready to have conversations with your data? Announced in public preview within Microsoft Fabric is AI Skill, a new capability in Fabric that allows you to build...

2024-09-11 (first published: )

361 reads

Blogs

The Book of Redgate: Mistakes

By

This is kind of a funny page to look at. The next page has...

ADF Pipeline Debugging Fails with BadRequest – The Sequel

By

A while ago I blogged about a use case where a pipeline fails during...

Why I stopped using MCP for AI coding stuff

By

Something has shifted quietly in 2026. The developers I know/respect—the ones actually shipping, not...

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Forums

Dynamic Unpivot

By pietlinden

I have a table I didn't design that has tons of repeating groups in...

Writing as an Art and a Job

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Writing as an Art and...

String Similarity II

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item String Similarity II

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Question of the Day

String Similarity II

What is the range for the result from the EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY() function in SQL Server 2025?

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