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

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: )

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Blogs

The Book of Redgate: SQL Server Central

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It was neat to stumble on this in the book, a piece by me,...

Git forked

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Forgive me for the title. Mentally I’m 12. When I started my current day...

Setting FK Constraints in Data Modeler

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One of the things a customer asked recently about Redgate Data Modeler was how...

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Expanding into Print

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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Downtime Caused by the Postgres Transaction ID Wraparound Problem

By Chandan Shukla

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The String Distance I

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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Question of the Day

The String Distance I

In SQL Server 2025, what is returned by this code:

SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE('Steve', 'Stan')
Assume preview features are enabled.

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