Starting Your First Data Warehouse: A Practical Learning Guide
I had a great question asked of me the other day and thought I would turn the answer into a blog post. The question is “I’m an experienced DBA...
2025-11-12
23 reads
James Serra's Blog
Microsoft Purview: The Key Benefits of Data Governance
I still see a lot of confusion about the functionality of Microsoft Purview ever since multiple products were combined into it, so I wanted to write this blog to...
2025-11-10 (first published: 2025-10-15)
661 reads
Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference
A bunch of new features for Microsoft Fabric were announced at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference (FabCon Vienna) recently. Here are all the new features that I found most interesting, with...
2025-10-17 (first published: 2025-09-24)
1,608 reads
New AI capabilities in SQL Server 2025
(Side note: Excited to share that the audio version of my book “Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh” is...
2025-10-01 (first published: 2025-09-09)
849 reads
Azure IoT Operations
I want to talk about a fairly new product that you may not be aware of: Azure IoT Operations, which GA’d last November (it was first announced at Ignite...
2025-09-03 (first published: 2025-08-19)
788 reads
Microsoft Fabric shortcut‑based AI transformations
A new feature has just been released in Microsoft Fabric that I was so impressed with that I decided to blog about it. Available in public preview is the...
2025-07-23
28 reads
Microsoft Fabric shortcut-based AI transformations
A new feature has just been released in Microsoft Fabric that I was so impressed with that I decided to blog about it. Available in public preview is the...
2025-07-23
7 reads
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
16 reads
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
52 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)
794 reads
Blogs
Programmatic Tool Calling with the Claude SDK
Programmatic Tool Calling with the Claude SDK Every morning somebody on the team runs the...
A New Word: Mauerbauertraurigkeit
By Steve Jones
mauerbauertraurigkeit – n. inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends whose company...
Methodology for dealing with bad data in production
By Brian Kelley
Pinal Dave wrote up his methodology for what to do when you discover bad...
Forums
Why SQL Server Database Attach fails and how to repair it
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Why SQL Server Database Attach...
Fixing P1 Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing P1 Queries
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT() IV
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code:
select bit_count('A')
What is returned? See possible answers