James works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last nine 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.
Thanks to everyone who attended my session “Best Practices to Deliver BI Solutions” for Pragmatic Works. The abstract for my session is below and the recording will be available soon here. I hope I provided some good info for you. Here … Continue reading →
What are the advantages of using SSAS Cubes over a regular data warehouse for reporting? Note I’m not asking why report on a data warehouse instead of a OLTP database. which is covered at Why You Need a Data Warehouse. Think … Continue reading →
I will be presenting a brand new session entitled “Best Practices to Deliver BI Solutions” tomorrow, August 6th, at 11am EST for Pragmatic Works. You can register here. The abstract for my session is below. I hope you can make … Continue reading →
Thanks to everyone who attended my session “Building an Effective Data Warehouse Architecture” for 24 hours of PASS, PASS Summit Preview. The abstract is below and the recording of the session is available here. I hope you enjoyed it! Here is the PowerPoint … Continue reading →
In PerformancePoint, when using a analytic grid or chart or a scorecard, if you are not able to use the “Show Details” option (a drillthrough action) because it is grayed out, one or more of the following could be the … Continue reading →
In SQL Server 2012, a new feature was added called Columnstore Indexes that resulted in huge query performance improvements. In SQL Server 2014, there have been two major improvements on this feature: Clustered: They have enhanced the columnstore to be a pure … Continue reading →
I will be presenting the session “Building an Effective Data Warehouse Architecture” this Wednesday, July 31st, at 10pm EST for the 24 hours of PASS, PASS Summit Preview. Info about the event, and the abstract for my session, is below. … Continue reading →
Microsoft has posted ALL the session videos for TechEd Europe 2013 and they are available for free! Some great videos on the latest products and versions. Check them out here. There are four videos on SQL Server 2014: Microsoft SQL Server … Continue reading →
What looks to be the biggest and best new feature in SQL Server 2014 is called the “In-memory OLTP Engine”, code-name: Hekaton. In short, Hekaton is a SQL Server In-memory OLTP Engine. Hekaton provides in-memory OLTP capabilities built into core … Continue reading →
Introduction You likely have heard about data warehousing, but are unsure exactly what it is and if your company needs one. I will attempt to help you to fully understand what a data warehouse can do and the reasons to … Continue reading →
Why do companies use placement firms to find IT contractors instead of using internal recruiters? Who better to answer that question that a recruiter who has been in the business for many years and now has his own small placement … Continue reading →
FYI: Geoflow (see Geoflow Preview for Excel 2013) is now called Power Map, and Data Explorer (see Microsoft Data Explorer) is now called Power Query. Microsoft Power Query for Excel has reached General Availability and is now available for download. More info: “Data … Continue reading →
Announced at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 is Power BI for Office 365: Power BI for Office 365 is a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) solution that enables customers to easily gain insights from their data, working within Excel to analyze and visualize … Continue reading →
SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) has a new update: VS 2010: June 2013 version: 10.3.30618.1, December 2012 version: 10.3.21208.0, November 2012 version: 10.3.21101.1, September 2012 version: 10.3.20905.0, initial version: 10.3.20225.0 VS 2012: June 2013 version: 11.1.30618.1, December 2012 version: 11.1.21208.0, November 2012 version: 11.1.21101.1, … Continue reading →
Wow, Visual Studio 2012 is just out of diapers and here comes the next version! Microsoft officials released the preview of Visual Studio 2013 at the Microsoft Build 2013 developer conference on June 26 (along with TFS 2013). Download here. … Continue reading →
As I mentioned in my blog post describing the new features in the next version of SQL Server (see SQL Server 2014!), the CTP1 was to be released in June, and that time has come. Download it here, or it is … Continue reading →
Microsoft has posted ALL the session videos for TechEd North America 2013 and they are available for free! What a great way to learn all about SQL Server 2012 and Business Intelligence (some sessions have hands-on labs). Check them out here. … Continue reading →
There is nothing more annoying to me in my profession than getting calls and emails from recruiters who are looking for senior-level BI people at ridiculously low rates. A common example: they want someone with 10-years experience in BI to … Continue reading →
Thanks to everyone who attended my session “Building an Effective Data Warehouse Architecture” for Pragmatic Works. There were over 500 attendees! The abstract is below and the recording of the session is available here. I received a ton of questions and I have attempted … Continue reading →
The Big 5 IT consulting companies (Accenture, Deloitte Consulting, PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP), KPMG, Ernst & Young) have various titles given to consultants along a career path. Wikipedia had good descriptions of the titles, and using that and a few other descriptions I … Continue reading →