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 Datamarts

As mentioned in my previous blog about the Microsoft Build event announcements, the biggest news was Power BI Datamarts. This is a new self-service capability included with Power BI...

2022-06-29 (first published: )

476 reads

Blog Post

Azure IoT Central

This is a short blog to give you a high-level overview on a product called Azure IoT Central. I saw this fairly new Azure product (GA Sept 2018) in...

2022-04-11 (first published: )

171 reads

Blog Post

Microsoft industry clouds

In talking with Microsoft customers, I have found that most are not aware that Microsoft has created industry clouds (see Microsoft Industry Clouds). So I wanted to use this...

2022-01-28 (first published: )

161 reads

Blog Post

Distributed SQL

A very brief history of databases for online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads starts with relational databases (RDBMS), which worked well for many years. With the advent of the internet and...

2022-01-07 (first published: )

537 reads

Blogs

Rolling Back a Broken Release

By

We had an interesting discussion about deployments in databases and how you go forward...

A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth

By

You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...

Presenting with Visual Studio Code

By

A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Lots of FKs

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Lots of FKs

Real-time On-prem SQL Server Data in Excel – Over the Internet

By Cláudio Tereso

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Real-time On-prem SQL Server Data...

Can You Let Go of Determinism

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Can You Let Go of...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Lots of FKs

In SQL Server 2025, what are the most outgoing and incoming FK references a table can have?

See possible answers