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

Microsoft Purview GA menu’s

The new data governance features in Microsoft Purview are now being made generally available as they are gradually rolled out across various regions. You can view the deployment schedule...

2024-10-02 (first published: )

157 reads

Blog Post

Microsoft Purview FAQ

I get many of the same questions about Microsoft Purview, so I wanted to list those common questions here along with their answers. If your question is not answered...

2024-09-23 (first published: )

225 reads

Blog Post

Microsoft Fabric AI Skill

Are you ready to have conversations with your data? Announced in public preview within Microsoft Fabric is AI Skill, a new capability in Fabric that allows you to build...

2024-09-11 (first published: )

360 reads

Blog Post

Copilot in Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Copilot is an app that uses AI to help you find information, create content, and get things done faster (see What Is Copilot? Microsoft’s AI Assistant Explained).  Copilot is...

2024-07-17 (first published: )

489 reads

Blogs

Claude Code Helps Analyze Test Data Manager Log Files

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I had a customer ask about analyzing their Test Data Manager (TDM) usage to...

PowerPoint to HTML with Claude AI

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I had an idea for an animated view of a sales tool, and started...

Don’t Miss Out – SQL Server Query Tuning Fundamentals Starts Next Monday!

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Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...

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Forums

SQL Server 2025 Query Performance Tuning: Troubleshoot and Optimize Query Performance

By Site Owners

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server 2025 Query Performance...

Is it uncommon for Dev's to have a data model of the source data

By Coffee_&_SQL

This is a generic question. To the moderators, I wasn't sure where to place...

ROLLUP to calculate Month total for all Categories

By Reh23

Good Afternoon, I have built a table with four columns:  Period(Month), Category, Numerator, Denominator....

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Question of the Day

Creating JSON I

On SQL Server 2025, what happens when I run this code:

SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG( 'City':'Denver')
GO

See possible answers