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: )

1,048 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: )

872 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

20 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: )

634 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: )

1,036 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...

2021-01-04

45 reads

Blogs

Asking for Help Isn’t a Weakness

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During COVID, I attended training on software/enterprise architecture given by Mark Richards. One of...

T-SQL Tuesday #204 – Are blogs still relevant?

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Note: This post is the invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #204 on November 3rd, 2026....

A Front Door for the DBA Team – AgentDBA UI

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AgentDBA began as a command line. That suits one DBA on one server, but...

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SQL Server Vector Support II

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Great Things

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Troubleshooting Slow Queries That Already Have an Index

By Imran2629

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SQL Server Vector Support II

With regard to SQL Server 2025's Vector support, what is an embedding?

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