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 FAQ

Power BI has become hugely popular and I find common questions about functionality and features, so I thought I would put in this blog some of those questions with...

2020-06-23 (first published: )

611 reads

Blog Post

Monitoring Power BI

There are a number of options for monitoring Power BI that I wanted to mention: Performance analyzer: Find out how each of your report elements, such as visuals and...

2020-06-02 (first published: )

734 reads

Blog Post

Query Acceleration for ADLS

Just announced is Query Acceleration for Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS) as well as Blob Storage. This is a new capability for ADLS that enables applications and analytics...

2020-05-20 (first published: )

445 reads

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: )

625 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

94 reads

Blogs

Finding Balance: Things Will Come Up

By

I have a presentation on finding balance in your career that got quite a...

Who Are You Doing It For?

By

But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...

Presenting Twice in May 2026

By

I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

The day-to-day pressures of a DBA team, and how we can work smarter with automation and AI

By Terry Jago

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The day-to-day pressures of a...

Migrate SSRS Reports to PowerBI Report Server in SQL Server 2025

By Deepam Ghosh

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Migrate SSRS Reports to PowerBI...

Identities and Sequences III

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Identities and Sequences III

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Identities and Sequences III

When thinking of the Identity property for auto incrementing columns and sequences for the same action, which can be used with the BIGINT data type?

See possible answers