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”.

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Blog Post

Common Data Model

The Common Data Model (CDM) is a shared data model that is a place to keep all common data to be shared between applications and data sources.  Another way...

2019-06-20 (first published: )

1,740 reads

Blog Post

Azure Data Explorer

Azure Data Explorer (ADX) was announced as generally available on Feb 7th.  In short, ADX is a fully managed data analytics service for near real-time analysis on large volumes...

2019-03-14

291 reads

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Blogs

AI Step 1

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Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance

25 Years Later: What SQLServerCentral Meant to Me

By Brian Knight

Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years Later: What SQLServerCentral...

Doing Good at SQL Server Central

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Doing Good at SQL Server...

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Question of the Day

Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance

I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code: 

SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:
Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.
What is wrong?

See possible answers