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: )

997 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: )

808 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

9 reads

Blog Post

Data Lakehouse defined

As a follow-up to my blog Data Lakehouse & Synapse, I wanted to talk about the various definitions I am seeing about what a data lakehouse is, including a...

2021-02-02 (first published: )

595 reads

Blog Post

Syncing SQL databases

There are various ways to keep SQL Server databases and SQL Database/SQL Managed Instance (SQL MI) databases in-sync asynchronously that I will discuss in this blog. The main use...

2021-01-05 (first published: )

842 reads

Blogs

T-SQL Tuesday #193 – A Note to Your Past, and a Warning from Your Future

By

I haven’t posted in a while (well, not here at least since I’ve been...

Keeping MS Docs Up to Date

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One of the things that I like about the SQL Server docs (MS Learn...

Patch Tuesday – Where to get more information

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For a number of years I have subscribed to Randy Franklin Smith's Patch Tuesday...

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Forums

Pivot but preserve all rows on Aggregate column

By getsaby

Hello Need help in pivoting this data set, the Pivot takes MIN/MAX on a...

any reason to avoid asking ssis to extract files from ftp

By stan

hi we have to replace talend which generally was used to move files. talend's...

MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY in extended event , is not clearly explained in msdn.

By rajemessage 14195

hi,   i have checked reducing it increasing it but could not get any...

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Question of the Day

What is the PRODUCT

In SQL Server 2025, what does this return?

CREATE TABLE Numbers
( n INT)
GO
INSERT dbo.Numbers
(
n
)
VALUES
(1), (2), (3)
GO
SELECT PRODUCT(n)
FROM dbo.Numbers

See possible answers