Becoming a Presenter: My Journey and Tips
I still remember my very first presentation many years ago. Someone in my team asked me to demo a project I’d been working on, and I was absolutely terrified....
2025-06-17
13 reads
James Serra's Blog
Microsoft Build announcements
Once again there were a number of Microsoft Build announcements related to data and AI, and some were very impressive. Below are my favorites. Everything announced at Build can...
2025-05-22
42 reads
Deciphering Data Architectures: When to Use a Warehouse, Fabric, Lakehouse, or Mesh
As discussed in my blog and book “Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh” (Amazon), organizations are often challenged with...
2025-05-28 (first published: 2025-05-06)
777 reads
Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference
A ton of new features for Microsoft Fabric were announced at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference recently. Here are all the new features that I found most interesting, with some...
2025-04-23 (first published: 2025-04-09)
354 reads
Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric
In today’s data-driven world, organizations need the ability to analyze and act on data as it flows in real time. Microsoft Fabric provides a powerful ecosystem for real-time intelligence,...
2025-03-24 (first published: 2025-03-12)
7,357 reads
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: 2025-02-18)
1,217 reads
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: 2025-01-29)
680 reads
Introduction to OpenAI and LLMs – Part 3
My previous blog posts on this topic were Introduction to OpenAI and LLMs, the “what” part (what is OpenAI and LLM), and the “how” part Introduction to OpenAI and LLMs –...
2025-01-09
32 reads
Ways to land data into Fabric OneLake
Microsoft Fabric is rapidly gaining popularity as a unified data platform, leveraging OneLake as its central data storage hub for all Fabric-integrated products. A variety of tools and methods...
2024-12-18 (first published: 2024-12-12)
645 reads
Microsoft Ignite Announcements Nov 2024
Announced at Microsoft Ignite last week were some new product features related to the data platform and AI. Check out the Major announcements and Book of News. Below are...
2024-12-06 (first published: 2024-11-26)
342 reads
Blogs
PlanTrace Now Supports PostgreSQL
PlanTrace Now Supports PostgreSQL The same plan analysis you know from...
A New Word: the Kinder Surprise
By Steve Jones
the kinder surprise – . the point in your early adolescence when you realize...
Crash-Consistent Snapshot Cloning - Hyper-V Edition
If you’ve been following my T-SQL Snapshot Backup series, most of what I’ve covered...
Forums
SSRS Is Dead. Here Are Your Real Options
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SSRS Is Dead. Here Are...
The Distance Metric
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Distance Metric
The New Wave of Security Threats
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The New Wave of Security...
Question of the Day
The Distance Metric
In the new VECTOR_DISTANCE() function in SQL Server 2025, the first parameter is the distance_metric. What is this?
See possible answers