James works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last eleven 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 40 years of IT experience. Check out his book Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh.
There are various ways to keep SQL Server databases and SQL Database/SQL Managed Instance (SQL MI) databases in-sync asynchronously that I will discuss in this blog. The main use cases for syncing databases are to distribute reads (i.e. a second … Continue reading →
Announced last week is a major new feature for Power BI: you can now use DirectQuery to connect to Azure Analysis Services or Power BI Datasets and combine it with other DirectQuery datasets and/or imported datasets. This is a HUGE … Continue reading →
Azure Purview is at data governance solution that is the sequel to the product Azure Data Catalog, and is now available in public preview. Purview catalogs data from on-premises, multi-cloud, or software-as-a-service (SaaS) locations. Purview let’s you understand exactly what … Continue reading →
(Note: I will give a demo on Azure Synapse Analytics this Saturday Dec 5th at 1:10pm EST, at the PASS SQL Saturday Atlanta BI (info) (register) (full schedule)) Great news! Azure Synapse Analytics is now GA (see announcement). While most … Continue reading →
I will be speaking at two upcoming PASS SQLSaturdays. These are free events that you can attend virtually: Azure Synapse Analytics: A Data Lakehouse 12/5/20, 1:10pm EST, PASS SQL Saturday Atlanta BI (info) (slides) Azure Synapse Analytics is Azure SQL … Continue reading →
For those companies that can’t yet move to the cloud, have certain workloads that can’t move to the cloud, or have limited to no internet access, Microsoft has options to build your own private on-prem cloud via Azure Stack and … Continue reading →
A question that I have been hearing recently from customers using Azure Synapse Analytics (the public preview version) is what is the difference between using an external table versus a T-SQL view on a file in a data lake? Note … Continue reading →
I have listed below the top questions I see from customers about Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI, and the blogs that I have written that try to answer each question. I have also added these questions to my blogs … Continue reading →
As I was finishing up a demo script for my presentation at the SQL PASS Virtual Summit on 11/13 (details on my session here), I wanted to blog about part of the demo that shows a feature in the public … Continue reading →
Microsoft Ignite has always announced many new products and new product features, and this year was no exception. Many exciting announcements, and below I list the major data platform related announcements: Usage-based optimization with Azure Synapse and Power BI: A new … Continue reading →
There are some options in Azure Synapse Analytics that are not obvious that I wanted to point out. While in Azure Synapse Studio, going to the Data hub and clicking the “+” at the top to the right of Data … Continue reading →
(updated 12/8/20)The public preview version of Azure Synapse Analytics has three compute options and four types of storage that it can access (mentioned in my blog at SQL on-demand in Azure Synapse Analytics). This gives twelve possible combinations of querying … Continue reading →
I am starting to see this relatively new phrase, “Data Lakehouse”, being used in the data platform world. It’s the combination of “Data Lake” and “Data Warehouse”. In this post I’ll give my thoughts on it, and how the next … Continue reading →
I had a previous blog comparing Cosmos DB to a relational database (see Understanding Cosmos DB coming from a relational world) and one topic that it did not address that I want to now is how to handle reference tables … Continue reading →
The new SQL on-demand (to be renamed SQL serverless) offering within Azure Synapse Analytics opens up a whole new world of getting insights into data immediately, at low-cost, using familiar tools/languages. There is no infrastructure to setup or clusters to … Continue reading →
I have wrote a number of blogs on the topic of business continuity in SQL Database before (HA/DR for Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Database high availability, Azure SQL Database disaster recovery) but with a number of new features I … Continue reading →
On the heels of More Azure Blob Storage enhancements come more enhancements for Azure Data Lake Store Gen2 (ADLS Gen2): Archive tier is now GA: The archive tier provides an ultra-low cost tier for long term retention of data while … Continue reading →
I discover a small new feature the other day, but a very useful one. Previously, there was no way to upload files to an ADLS Gen2 storage account via the Azure portal. You had to use Azure Storage Explorer – … Continue reading →
Power BI has become hugely popular and I find common questions about functionality and features, so I thought I would put in this blog some of those questions with answers: What is the best way to organize workspaces? To improve … Continue reading →
(updated 12/6/20) I recently blogged about Query Acceleration for ADLS, which also applies to Azure Blob storage. Now there are more new features for blog storage that I will talk about. To see which of these features is also available … Continue reading →