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The first two chapters of my data architecture book are available!

James Serra's Blog Posted on May 3, 2023 by James SerraMay 3, 2023

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 →

Posted in Data Lake, Data Mesh, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 2 Replies

Questions to ask when designing a data architecture

James Serra's Blog Posted on July 26, 2022 by James SerraJuly 25, 2022

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 →

Posted in Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 5 Replies

Data Lakehouse, Data Mesh, and Data Fabric 

James Serra's Blog Posted on February 8, 2022 by James SerraFebruary 8, 2022

(NOTE: I have returned to Microsoft and am working as a Solution Architect in Microsoft Industry Solutions, formally known as Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), where I help customers build solutions on Azure. Contact your Microsoft account executive for more info. … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Lake, Data Mesh, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 9 Replies

Podcast and presentation decks on data architectures

James Serra's Blog Posted on August 9, 2021 by James SerraAugust 13, 2021

Tomorrow (Tuesday (8/10/21) I will be on a podcast for SaxonGlobal called “The Alphabet Soup of Data Architectures” where I will talk about the modern data warehouse, data fabric, data lakehouse, data mesh, and more. I hope you can check … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Mesh, Data warehouse, Podcast, Presentation, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Data Mesh: Centralized vs decentralized data architecture

James Serra's Blog Posted on June 30, 2021 by James SerraJuly 22, 2021

One of the biggest differences between the Data Mesh and other data platform architectures is a data mesh is a highly decentralized distributed data architecture as opposed to a centralized monolithic data architecture based on a data warehouse and/or a … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Lake, Data Mesh, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 9 Replies

Data Fabric defined

James Serra's Blog Posted on June 9, 2021 by James SerraJuly 21, 2021

Another buzzword that you may have been hearing a lot about lately is Data Fabric. In short, a data fabric is a single environment consisting of a unified architecture with services and technologies running on it that architecture that helps … Continue reading →

Posted in Azure Data Lake, Data Lake, Data Mesh, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 58 Replies

Modern Data Warehouse explained

James Serra's Blog Posted on April 27, 2021 by James SerraApril 26, 2021

I created a short YouTube video (20 minutes) that is a whiteboarding session that describes the five stages (ingest, store, transform, model, visualize) that make up a modern data warehouse (MDW) and the Azure products that you can use for … Continue reading →

Posted in Azure Synapse Analytics/SQL DW, Data Lake, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Videos | 4 Replies

Modern Data Warehouse & Reverse ETL

James Serra's Blog Posted on April 12, 2021 by James SerraApril 11, 2021
person holding chart and bar graph

An extension to the Modern Data Warehouse (MDW) that I have heard a bit about lately is called “Reverse ETL”. Before I describe what that is, first I wanted to give a quick review of a typical MDW, which consists … Continue reading →

Posted in Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 8 Replies

Data Mesh defined

James Serra's Blog Posted on February 16, 2021 by James SerraSeptember 2, 2021

The two latest trends in emerging data platform architectures are the Data Lakehouse (the subject of my last blog Data Lakehouse defined), and the Data Mesh, the subject of this blog. Data Mesh was first introduced by ThoughtWorks via the … Continue reading →

Posted in Azure Data Lake, Azure Synapse Analytics/SQL DW, Data Lake, Data Mesh, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 29 Replies

Top Modern Data Warehouse questions

James Serra's Blog Posted on July 22, 2019 by James SerraJuly 21, 2019

Below are the top 15 questions I am seeing from customers looking to build a modern data warehouse in the cloud, and the blogs that I have wrote that try to answer each question (I have updated most of these … Continue reading →

Posted in Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 4 Replies

Big Data Workshop

James Serra's Blog Posted on July 10, 2019 by James SerraJuly 10, 2019

A challenge I have with customers who want to get hands-on experience with the Azure products that are found in a modern data warehouse architecture is finding a workshop that covers many of those products. To the rescue is a … Continue reading →

Posted in Big Data, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 12 Replies

The need for having both a DW and cubes

James Serra's Blog Posted on July 20, 2018 by James SerraApril 27, 2021

I have heard some people say if you have a data warehouse, there is no need for cubes (when I say “cubes” I am referring to tabular and multidimensional OLAP models).  And I have heard others say if you have OLAP … Continue reading →

Posted in Azure Analysis Services, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 10 Replies

Podcast: Myths of Modern Data Management

James Serra's Blog Posted on April 2, 2018 by James SerraApril 2, 2018

As part of the Secrets of Data Analytics Leaders by the Eckerson Group, I did a 30-minute podcast with Wayne Eckerson where I discussed myths of modern data management.  Some of the myths discussed include ‘all you need is a data lake’, ‘the … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Lake, Data warehouse, Podcast, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Webinar: Is the traditional data warehouse dead?

James Serra's Blog Posted on March 28, 2018 by James SerraApril 1, 2018

As a follow-up to my blog Is the traditional data warehouse dead?, I did a webinar on that very topic for the Agile Big Data Processing Summit.  The deck is here and the webinar is below:  

Continue reading →
Posted in Data warehouse, Podcast, Presentation, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Is the traditional data warehouse dead? webinar

James Serra's Blog Posted on March 26, 2018 by James SerraApril 1, 2018

As a follow-up to my blog Is the traditional data warehouse dead?, I will be doing a webinar on that very topic tomorrow (March 27th) at 11am EST for the Agile Big Data Processing Summit that I hope you can join.  Details … Continue reading →

Posted in Data warehouse, Podcast, Presentation | 1 Reply

Azure Data Architecture Guide (ADAG)

James Serra's Blog Posted on February 15, 2018 by James SerraFebruary 15, 2018

The Azure Data Architecture Guide has just been released!  Check it out: http://aka.ms/ADAG Think of it as a menu or syllabus for data professionals.  What service should you use, why, and when would you use it.  I had a small involvement … Continue reading →

Posted in Big Data, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Reply

Is the traditional data warehouse dead?

James Serra's Blog Posted on December 22, 2017 by James SerraDecember 30, 2019

There have been a number of enhancements to Hadoop recently when it comes to fast interactive querying with such products as Hive LLAP and Spark SQL which are being used over slower interactive querying options such as Tez/Yarn and batch … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Lake, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 10 Replies

Data Virtualization vs Data Warehouse

James Serra's Blog Posted on August 24, 2017 by James SerraJune 29, 2021

Data virtualization goes by a lot of different names: logical data warehouse, data federation, virtual database, and decentralized data warehouse.  Data virtualization allows you to integrate data from various sources, keeping the data in-place, so that you can generate reports … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Lake, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 3 Replies

Data Warehouse Fast Track Reference Guide for SQL Server 2016

James Serra's Blog Posted on June 7, 2017 by James SerraJune 4, 2017

I had previously blogged about the Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server 2016, a joint effort between Microsoft and its hardware partners to deliver validated, pre-configured solutions that reduce the complexity of implementing a data warehouse on SQL Server … Continue reading →

Posted in Data warehouse, Fast Track, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 2 Replies

SQL Data Warehouse reference architectures

James Serra's Blog Posted on May 17, 2017 by James SerraJanuary 11, 2018

With so many product options to choose from for building a big data solution in the cloud, such as SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW), Azure Analysis Services (AAS), SQL Database (SQL DB), and Azure Data Lake (ADL), there are various combinations … Continue reading →

Posted in Azure Synapse Analytics/SQL DW, Data Lake, Data warehouse, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 6 Replies

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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 ten 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 35 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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