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 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: )

3,033 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: )

453 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: )

1,199 reads

Blog Post

My latest presentations

Just wanted to make everyone aware of my latest presentations that I recently uploaded. Details below. I also have a list of all my presentations with slide decks here.   Azure...

2019-12-04

59 reads

Blog Post

Microsoft Ignite Announcements

Microsoft Ignite has always announced many new products and new product features, and this year was no exception. Many exciting announcements, and below I list the major data platform...

2019-11-13 (first published: )

732 reads

Blog Post

Databricks Delta Lake

Introduced in April 2019, Databricks Delta Lake is, in short, a transactional storage layer that runs on top of cloud storage such as Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen2...

2019-10-25 (first published: )

930 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...

The Proof of the Backup Is in the Pudding

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For me, the objective is straightforward: have a backup strategy that is reliable, understandable,...

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....

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Forums

SQL Server Vector Support II

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Vector Support II

Great Things

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Great Things

Troubleshooting Slow Queries That Already Have an Index

By Imran2629

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Troubleshooting Slow Queries That Already...

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Question of the Day

SQL Server Vector Support II

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

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