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

Levels in IT consultancy

The Big 5 IT consulting companies (Accenture, Deloitte Consulting, PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP), KPMG, Ernst & Young) have various titles given to consultants along...

2013-06-13

1,039 reads

Blog Post

SQL Server 2014!

Just when you thought you got a handle on SQL Server 2012, here comes the next version!  SQL Server 2014 was announced...

2013-06-07 (first published: )

6,957 reads

Blogs

Export a Power BI Report that cannot be Downloaded

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Yes, you’re reading that right, we’re going to download a report that cannot be...

Query Intelligence in SQL Server 2025: What Developers Need to Know

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When Microsoft announced SQL Server 2025, I was curious about what would truly change...

Finding and Killing Blockers with Redgate AI Tech

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Redgate has a research arm, called the Foundry, that has been experimenting with AIs...

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T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Substring Changes

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Question of the Day

Getting the Indexed Columns

I run this code on SQL Server 2022 to get a list of all the indexes and their key columns. What is returned?

SELECT   
    INDEX_COL (N'AdventureWorks2017.Sales.SalesOrderDetail')

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