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Home→Published 2025

Yearly Archives: 2025

Fabric Cost Analysis (FCA)

James Serra's Blog Posted on December 24, 2025 by James SerraDecember 24, 2025

Monitoring costs in Microsoft Fabric can be trickier than it first appears. You might assume it’s just a flat fee per capacity (easy, right?), but real-world usage tends to add complexity. Maybe you pause and resume a capacity, scale it … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft Fabric, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Microsoft Ignite Announcements Nov 2025

James Serra's Blog Posted on December 2, 2025 by James SerraDecember 8, 2025

Announced at Microsoft Ignite two weeks ago were many new product features related to the data platform. Check out the Major announcements and Book of News. I went through the many announcements and picked out the most interesting ones, so you don’t have to: Microsoft … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft Fabric, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Starting Your First Data Warehouse: A Practical Learning Guide

James Serra's Blog Posted on November 12, 2025 by James SerraNovember 11, 2025

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 in SQL Server/SQL DB, and my company is looking to build … Continue reading →

Posted in Data warehouse, Microsoft Fabric, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 6 Replies

Microsoft Purview: The Key Benefits of Data Governance

James Serra's Blog Posted on October 15, 2025 by James SerraOctober 14, 2025

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 help clear up that confusion. Microsoft Purview is a comprehensive solution … Continue reading →

Posted in Azure Purview, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference

James Serra's Blog Posted on September 24, 2025 by James SerraSeptember 23, 2025

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 some released now and others coming soon: More info: FabCon Vienna: … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft Fabric, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

New AI capabilities in SQL Server 2025

James Serra's Blog Posted on September 9, 2025 by James SerraJanuary 9, 2026

(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 now accessible for those who prefer this format. The audio reader … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication | Leave a reply

Azure IoT Operations

James Serra's Blog Posted on August 19, 2025 by James SerraAugust 17, 2025

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 in November 2023). Here is an excellent short video showing it … Continue reading →

Posted in Azure Arc, IoT, SQLServerPedia Syndication | Leave a reply

Microsoft Fabric shortcut‑based AI transformations 

James Serra's Blog Posted on July 23, 2025 by James SerraOctober 21, 2025

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 ability to create a shortcut to a raw text file and … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft Fabric, SQLServerPedia Syndication | Leave a reply

Becoming a Presenter: My Journey and Tips

James Serra's Blog Posted on June 17, 2025 by James SerraJune 16, 2025

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. Public speaking is famously a top fear for most people, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Presentation, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Microsoft Build announcements

James Serra's Blog Posted on May 22, 2025 by James SerraMay 22, 2025

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 be found in the Microsoft Build 2025 Book of News. Here you … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 2 Replies

Deciphering Data Architectures: When to Use a Warehouse, Fabric, Lakehouse, or Mesh

James Serra's Blog Posted on May 6, 2025 by James SerraMay 5, 2025

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 choosing the right data architecture to meet their business goals—especially as … Continue reading →

Posted in SQLServerPedia Syndication | 2 Replies

Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference

James Serra's Blog Posted on April 9, 2025 by James SerraApril 12, 2025

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 released now and others coming soon: More info: FabCon 2025: Fueling … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft Fabric, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric

James Serra's Blog Posted on March 12, 2025 by James SerraMarch 11, 2025

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, enabling businesses to process, store, analyze, and visualize data with minimal … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft Fabric, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 2 Replies

Azure SQL offerings

James Serra's Blog Posted on February 18, 2025 by James SerraFebruary 16, 2025

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 your workload. So, I thought I would write this blog to … Continue reading →

Posted in Azure SQL Database, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 4 Replies

Cool AI sites

James Serra's Blog Posted on January 29, 2025 by James SerraJanuary 29, 2025

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 LLMs – Part 3, along with a presentation on that topic … Continue reading →

Posted in OpenAI, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Introduction to OpenAI and LLMs – Part 3

James Serra's Blog Posted on January 9, 2025 by James SerraJanuary 26, 2025

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 – Part 2. Those blogs focused on using LLMs on unstructured data, … Continue reading →

Posted in OpenAI, SQLServerPedia Syndication | Leave a reply

About James Serra

I work at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where I have been for most of the last eleven years.  Prior to that I was an independent consultant working as a Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence architect and developer. I am a prior SQL Server MVP with over 40 years of IT experience. The views and opinions on this blog are mine and not that of Microsoft. Check out my book Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh. 

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Recent Posts

  • Fabric Cost Analysis (FCA)
  • Microsoft Ignite Announcements Nov 2025
  • Starting Your First Data Warehouse: A Practical Learning Guide
  • Microsoft Purview: The Key Benefits of Data Governance
  • Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference
  • New AI capabilities in SQL Server 2025
  • Azure IoT Operations
  • Microsoft Fabric shortcut‑based AI transformations 
  • Becoming a Presenter: My Journey and Tips
  • Microsoft Build announcements
  • Deciphering Data Architectures: When to Use a Warehouse, Fabric, Lakehouse, or Mesh
  • Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference
  • Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric
  • Azure SQL offerings
  • Cool AI sites
  • Introduction to OpenAI and LLMs – Part 3
  • Ways to land data into Fabric OneLake
  • Microsoft Ignite Announcements Nov 2024
  • Benefits of Migrating from Azure Synapse Analytics to Microsoft Fabric
  • European Microsoft Fabric Community Conference announcements

Recent Comments

  • Using Fabric Cost Analysis – Curated SQL on Fabric Cost Analysis (FCA)
  • Wynand Coetzee on Starting Your First Data Warehouse: A Practical Learning Guide
  • /s/ on Azure SQL offerings
  • Mark on Microsoft Ignite Announcements Nov 2025
  • James Serra on Starting Your First Data Warehouse: A Practical Learning Guide

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