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”.

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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: )

8,356 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: )

18,201 reads

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Blogs

T-SQL Tuesday #203: Risk and Reward

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This is timely, as I’m currently on a boat in the Adriatic taking a...

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...

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Forums

Anyone knows where to download SQLexpress edition for 2022

By sqlfriend

Where to download earlier version of SQL server express 2022?   Thanks

Risk Vs Reward, The never ending ROI discussion.

By Pat Wright

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Risk Vs Reward, The never...

SSL/TLS Cert Validity Periods Decreasing

By Phil Parkin

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

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Question of the Day

Using CHOOSE()

We have this code that sets some status values and then queries them using the CHOOSE() function in SQL Server 2025. 

CREATE TABLE Status
(
    StatusID INT,
    StatusDescription VARCHAR(20)
);
GO
INSERT dbo.Status
(
    StatusID,
    StatusDescription
)
VALUES
(0, 'Uncategorized'),
(1, 'Active'),
(2, 'Inactive'),
(3, 'Temp');

GO
SELECT CHOOSE(StatusID, 'Unknown', 'Active', 'Inactive', 'Temporary')
FROM Status;
When the SELECT runs, what is returned?

See possible answers