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

Introduction to Hadoop

Hadoop was created by the Apache foundation as an open-source software framework capable of processing large amounts of heterogeneous data-sets in...

2014-03-11 (first published: )

8,329 reads

Blog Post

PolyBase explained

PolyBase is a new technology that integrates Microsoft’s MPP product, SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW), with Hadoop.  It is designed to...

2014-02-25 (first published: )

18,171 reads

Blogs

Finding Balance: Things Will Come Up

By

I have a presentation on finding balance in your career that got quite a...

Who Are You Doing It For?

By

But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...

Presenting Twice in May 2026

By

I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

what data type i should use for roversion col and can i use less than greater

By rajemessage 14195

can i use Rowversioncol ( in my database it's synonyme timestamp is used) to...

Radius Latitude Longitude

By HeftSteady

I have a table with latitude longitude in the format.  45.123456 , -111.123456 ,...

degree of parallelism

By Davekahn

Team, I'm trying to figure out what will be the best recommendation to configure...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

A Fun Computer Quote

Which movie featured this quote?

"All programs have a desire to be useful."
Happy April Fools!

See possible answers