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: )

1,028 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: )

849 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

14 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: )

603 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: )

955 reads

Blogs

Programmatic Tool Calling with the Claude SDK

By

Programmatic Tool Calling with the Claude SDK Every morning somebody on the team runs the...

A New Word: Mauerbauertraurigkeit

By

mauerbauertraurigkeit – n. inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends whose company...

Methodology for dealing with bad data in production

By

Pinal Dave wrote up his methodology for what to do when you discover bad...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

VACATION!

By Grant Fritchey

Comments posted to this topic are about the item VACATION!

Why SQL Server Database Attach fails and how to repair it

By Nisarg Upadhyay

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Why SQL Server Database Attach...

Fixing P1 Queries

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing P1 Queries

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

BIT_COUNT() IV

In SQL Server 2025, I run this code:

select bit_count('A')
What is returned?

See possible answers