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

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: )

437 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: )

618 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

69 reads

Blog Post

SQL Database MI benefits

As I see a huge number of customers migrating their on-prem databases to the Azure cloud, the main question they ask is about whether they should go with an...

2020-03-10 (first published: )

885 reads

Blog Post

Power BI Real-time Streaming

With Power BI real-time streaming, you can stream data and update dashboards in real-time. Any visual or dashboard that can be created in Power BI can also be created...

2020-02-19 (first published: )

2,993 reads

Blog Post

Azure Storage tips

As a followup to my blog post Azure Data Lake Store Gen2 is GA, I wanted to give some pointers when using ADLS Gen2 as well as blob storage,...

2020-01-24 (first published: )

427 reads

Blog Post

DevOps for databases: “DataOps”

DevOps, a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and information-technology operations (Ops), has become a very popular way to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery of...

2020-01-16 (first published: )

1,172 reads

Blogs

From Couch-Potato to Triathlete – and What This Means for Your SQL Server

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Do you know if your SQL Server is really running at its best? To...

Retro Data 2025 – Slidedeck

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You can find the slides of my session on the €100 DWH in Azure...

The Book of Redgate: We Value Teams

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This value is something that I still hear today: our best work is done...

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Forums

Single User SQL Server on Linux

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All the Costs of Downtime

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item All the Costs of Downtime

How Well Does the MSSQL Extension in VSCode Work?

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Well Does the MSSQL...

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Question of the Day

Single User SQL Server on Linux

How can I start SQL Server on Linux in single-user mode to restore the master database?

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