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

Azure SQL offerings

There are three Azure SQL products with so many different deployment options, service tiers, and compute tiers that it can get quite confusing when choosing the right option for...

2025-03-03 (first published: )

687 reads

Blog Post

Cool AI sites

As I researched and wrote my OpenAI and LLMs blogs (see Introduction to OpenAI and LLMs, Introduction to OpenAI and LLMs – Part 2 and Introduction to OpenAI and...

2025-02-07 (first published: )

588 reads

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Blogs

Understanding Zonal Redundancy in Azure SQL MI

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Do you know what happens when you enable zonal redundancy for your SQL managed...

SQL Server Database Compatibility Levels

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Why You Shouldn’t Overlook This Quiet but Critical SQL Server Setting   If you’ve...

The PASS Summit on Tour in the Netherlands

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The PASS Summit goes on tour this year, with the final date the first...

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Forums

How a Legacy Logic Choked SQL Server in a 30-Year-Old Factory

By Chandan Shukla

Comments posted to this topic are about the item How a Legacy Logic Choked...

Execution plan shows enormous number of records

By yerbabuena19

The problem was reported to us by a customer. They shared a graphic execution...

T-SQL to SELECT rows where 2 columns in TBL_A do not exist in TBL_B

By Express12

I have 2 tables: TBL_A and TBL_B each with the same 2 columns; ServerName...

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Question of the Day

The Updated Columns List

I have this table in SQL Server 2022: 

CREATE TABLE CustomerLarge
  (CustomerID               INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1, 1) CONSTRAINT CustomerLargePK PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
 , CustomerName             VARCHAR(20)
 , CustomerContactFirstName VARCHAR(40)
 , CustomerContactLastName  VARCHAR(40)
 , Address                  VARCHAR(20)
 , Address2                 VARCHAR(20)
 , City                     VARCHAR(20)
 , CountryCode              CHAR(3)
 , Postal                   VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
If I check the columns_updated() function return in a trigger, what is the data returned?

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