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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Learn Better: Pause to Review More

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If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.

Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS

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If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...

SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data

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Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...

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Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...

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Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...

Semantic Search in SQL Server 2025

By Deepam Ghosh

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Semantic Search in SQL Server...

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Question of the Day

Encoding URLs

I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table: 

CREATE TABLE Response
( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY
, ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000)
)
GO
If I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use?

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