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

Monitoring Power BI

There are a number of options for monitoring Power BI that I wanted to mention: Performance analyzer: Find out how each of your report elements, such as visuals and...

2020-06-02 (first published: )

763 reads

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: )

453 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: )

640 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

110 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: )

905 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: )

3,028 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: )

449 reads

Blogs

dataMinds Connect 2026 – Slides & Scripts

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You can find the slides and SQL scripts for my session “Spice up your...

How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later)

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How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later) Updated...

The flight recorder: Replaying what an AI agent did on my SQL Server

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“What exactly did it do on my server?” is the first question a DBA...

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Forums

SSL/TLS Cert Validity Periods Decreasing

By Phil Parkin

Hi, to all of you who are using CA certs on SQL Server boxes...

It's Never Just One Thing

By Grant Fritchey

Comments posted to this topic are about the item It's Never Just One Thing

Calculating Min-Max Normalization in PowerBI

By Dinesh Asanka

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Calculating Min-Max Normalization in PowerBI

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Question of the Day

Checking the Error Log III

If I want to run sp_readerrorlog on SQL Server 2025, what permissions do I need?

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