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: )

1,008 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: )

821 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

12 reads

Blogs

Using CAT for Testing of Data Agents

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In last months one of the scenarios where you can use AI has been...

Are you getting value from your reporting?

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Do you spend so long manipulating your data into something vaguely useful that you...

The Book of Redgate: SQL Server Central

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It was neat to stumble on this in the book, a piece by me,...

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Forums

Backup to Immutable Storage

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Microsoft Security Changes and SQL Server

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Expanding into Print

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Question of the Day

Backup to Immutable Storage

In SQL Server 2025, a backup can be made on Azure Immutable Storage. What changes in how the backup is created?

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