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 Security

A common topic I have been discussing recently with customers is the security around Power BI. Basically, how to prevent users seeing data they shouldn’t. So I’ll discuss the...

2020-03-19 (first published: )

605 reads

Blog Post

Power BI Sharing

There are many ways to share the dashboards, reports, and datasets that you create in Power BI. Below I’ll compare all such options (there are twelve!). First make sure...

2020-03-16

62 reads

Blog Post

SQL Database MI benefits

As I see a huge number of customers migrating their on-prem databases to the Azure cloud, the main question they ask is about whether they should go with an...

2020-03-10 (first published: )

869 reads

Blog Post

Power BI Real-time Streaming

With Power BI real-time streaming, you can stream data and update dashboards in real-time. Any visual or dashboard that can be created in Power BI can also be created...

2020-02-19 (first published: )

2,971 reads

Blog Post

Azure Storage tips

As a followup to my blog post Azure Data Lake Store Gen2 is GA, I wanted to give some pointers when using ADLS Gen2 as well as blob storage,...

2020-01-24 (first published: )

425 reads

Blog Post

DevOps for databases: “DataOps”

DevOps, a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and information-technology operations (Ops), has become a very popular way to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery of...

2020-01-16 (first published: )

1,164 reads

Blog Post

My latest presentations

Just wanted to make everyone aware of my latest presentations that I recently uploaded. Details below. I also have a list of all my presentations with slide decks here.   Azure...

2019-12-04

35 reads

Blogs

SQL Training: Black Friday Deals Up to 75% Off

By

This Black Week, don't just get a discount—get ahead! Whether you're a total newbie...

How to find free space in Azure PosgreSQL

By

I wanted to figure out how big (or approximately how big) my dump file...

T-SQL Tuesday #180: Good enough is perfect Roundup

By

This month, I prompted bloggers to discuss whether good enough is perfect. Thank you to all...

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Forums

Announcing SQL Server 2025

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Announcing SQL Server 2025

Running Steve's Code

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Running Steve's Code

New SQL Server 2022 Functions

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item New SQL Server 2022 Functions

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Question of the Day

Running Steve's Code

Can you run this code in any of your SQL Server 2019 databases without error?

CREATE OR ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[StevesAmazingProc]
AS
    
        SELECT Consumer_ID ,
               Trend_Category ,
               Bit_Trace
        FROM    NewWorldDB.dbo.MarketTrend;
    
GO

See possible answers