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

Power BI and a Star Schema

I sometimes get asked from customers if they should use a star schema or should they use one large single table/flatfile for their dataset in Power BI. The answer...

2021-03-05 (first published: )

921 reads

Blog Post

Data Mesh defined

The two latest trends in emerging data platform architectures are the Data Lakehouse (the subject of my last blog Data Lakehouse defined), and the Data Mesh, the subject of...

2021-02-19 (first published: )

794 reads

Blog Post

Data Mesh defined

The two latest trends in emerging data platform architectures are the Data Lakehouse (the subject of my last blog Data Lakehouse defined), and the Data Mesh, the subject of...

2021-02-16

2 reads

Blog Post

Data Lakehouse defined

As a follow-up to my blog Data Lakehouse & Synapse, I wanted to talk about the various definitions I am seeing about what a data lakehouse is, including a...

2021-02-02 (first published: )

581 reads

Blog Post

Syncing SQL databases

There are various ways to keep SQL Server databases and SQL Database/SQL Managed Instance (SQL MI) databases in-sync asynchronously that I will discuss in this blog. The main use...

2021-01-05 (first published: )

764 reads

Blog Post

Syncing SQL databases

There are various ways to keep SQL Server databases and SQL Database/SQL Managed Instance (SQL MI) databases in-sync asynchronously that I will discuss in this blog. The main use...

2021-01-04

12 reads

Blogs

Azure SQL offerings

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There are three Azure SQL products with so many different deployment options, service tiers,...

T-SQL Tuesday #183 Roundup

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I hosted this month’s T-SQL Tuesday party with my invitation asking about tracking permissions....

A Little Brainstorming with an AI

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I was asked to do some a little thinking and brainstorming recently. Rather than...

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Forums

MEMORYBROKER_FOR_RESERVE experience

By tony28

Hi, Does anyone have experience with MEMORYBROKER_FOR_RESERVE ? when suddenly there is somehow constantly...

Moving Database Files

By Ahr Aitch

I just learned that my database was created on my C:\ drive in the...

Migrate MSSQL to MYSQL - Different Servers

By cajun_sql

I am needing to migrate a MSSQL db to MySQL, on a different server...

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Question of the Day

Mixed Backups

I have a complex database with a few filegroups and files. Can I run a backup command like this? (assume file/filegroup names are valid).

BACKUP DATABASE [complex]
    FILE = N'thirdone'
 ,  FILE = N'thirdtwo'
 ,  FILEGROUP = N'second' 
 TO  DISK = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL16.SQL2022\MSSQL\Backup\complex.bak' 
 WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT,  NAME = N'complex-Full Database Backup', SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD,  STATS = 10
GO

See possible answers