James works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last ten years. Before that 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. Check out his book Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh.
I blogged about Microsoft Fabric a few weeks ago, and wanted to follow up with an introduction video that covers the basics so hopefully you will understand the major features of Fabric at a high-level. You can find the video … Continue reading →
The HUGE announcement at Microsoft Build yesterday was Microsoft Fabric (see Introducing Microsoft Fabric: Data analytics for the era of AI), now available in public preview. I have been at Microsoft for nearly nine years, and this is easily the … Continue reading →
As I have mentioned in prior blog posts, I have been writing a data architecture book, which I started last November. The title of the book is “Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, … Continue reading →
I question I have been getting from customers lately is about a data marketplace. What is it, and what products can I use to build it? A data marketplace, sometimes called a data exchange, is an online platform where data … Continue reading →
As I mentioned in my Data Mesh, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse presentation, the data lakehouse architecture, where you use a data lake with delta lake as a software layer and skip using a relational data warehouse, is becoming more and … Continue reading →
Microsoft Purview, formally called Azure Purview (see Azure Purview is generally available) has recently released a number of new cool features. I wanted to call out a few of them: Data Sharing – in public preview, you can now share … Continue reading →
A question I get asked frequently from customers when discussing Data lake architecture is “Should I use one data lake for all my data, or multiple lakes?”. Ideally, you would use just one data lake, but I have seen many … Continue reading →
Happy new year to everyone! As I enter my 9th year at Microsoft, I have switched roles, and am now an Industry Advisor in Federal Civilian, helping our Federal Civilian customers deliver on their missions through the Microsoft cloud. Microsoft … Continue reading →
Over the years I have presented a ton (see the list), and some of those presentations were recorded. I had put some of them on my YouTube channel, but neglected to post some of them (13 in fact). They are … Continue reading →
The big announcement at the PASS Data Community Summit 2022 was that SQL Server 2022 is now generally available. See the official announcement. My top 10 list of new features are: Integration with Azure SQL Database Managed Instance — the Microsoft-managed, cloud-based … Continue reading →
I have attended and presented at a ton of conferences over the years (see the entire list at Presentations | James Serra’s Blog). If you are looking to learn a lot about the Microsoft data platform, the two biggest conferences … Continue reading →
Announced at Microsoft Ignite were some new product features related to data platform and AI. Below are the ones I found most interesting: Azure Cosmos DB adds distributed PostgreSQL support: Azure Cosmos DB now brings fast, flexible and scalable service … Continue reading →
I have had a lot of conversations with customers to help them understand how to design a data lake. I touched on this in my blog Data lake details, but that was written a long time ago so I wanted … Continue reading →
I had previously blogged about Azure Synapse Analytics database templates, and wanted to follow-up with some notes and tips on that feature as I have been using it a lot lately: Purview does not yet pull in the metadata for … Continue reading →
(Side note: There is a “subscribe” button on the right side of my home page if you wish to receive my blogs updates via email as soon as they are published). I have been asked a number of times on … Continue reading →
Recently there has been a number of great articles published on Power BI that I wanted to make you aware of that go beyond the features descriptions found in the Power BI documentation. These new articles fall under the Power … Continue reading →
Ingrown toenails can be a painful and persistent condition that affects many individuals, leading to discomfort and potential complications if left untreated. Choosing the right surgical intervention is crucial for achieving a permanent solution and ensuring a swift recovery. With … Continue reading →
When I’m leading a full-day architecture design session (ADS) with a customer and the goal is to come up with a data architecture for them, I first start doing “discovery” with them for at least a couple of hours so … Continue reading →
With Power BI continuing to get many great new features, including the latest in Datamarts (see my blog Power BI Datamarts), I’m starting to hear customers ask “Can I just build my entire enterprise data warehouse solution in Power BI”? … Continue reading →
As mentioned in my previous blog about the Microsoft Build event announcements, the biggest news was Power BI Datamarts. This is a new self-service capability included with Power BI Premium (premium capacity or per user) that enables users to uncover … Continue reading →