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.
I see a lot of confusion among many people on what features are available today in Azure Synapse Analytics (formally called Azure SQL Data Warehouse) and what features are coming in the future. Below is a picture (click to zoom) … Continue reading →
There are many ways to share the dashboards, reports, and datasets that you create in Power BI. Below I’ll compare all such options (there are thirteen!). First make sure to have an understanding about Power BI security (which I blogged … Continue reading →
A common topic I have been discussing recently with customers is the security around Power BI. Basically, how to prevent users seeing data they shouldn’t. So I’ll discuss the various “layers” of security. The Power BI service architecture is based … Continue reading →
As I see a huge number of customers migrating their on-prem databases to the Azure cloud, the main question they ask is about whether they should go with an IaaS solution (SQL Server in a VM) or a PaaS solution … Continue reading →
With Power BI real-time streaming, you can stream data and update dashboards in real-time. Any visual or dashboard that can be created in Power BI can also be created to display and update real-time data and visuals. When learning how … Continue reading →
As a followup to my blog post Azure Data Lake Store Gen2 is GA, I wanted to give some pointers when using ADLS Gen2 as well as blob storage, as it can get a bit confusing with all the options … Continue reading →
DevOps, a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and information-technology operations (Ops), has become a very popular way to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery of applications (“software”). The implementation of continuous delivery and DevOps to data … Continue reading →
As a follow-up to my last blog, Azure Synapse Analytics & Power BI performance, I wanted to focus on concurrency when using these two products. A common question I here from customers is because of the performance of Azure Synapse … Continue reading →
With two new relational database features (Result-set caching and Materialized Views) just GA’d in Azure Synapse Analytics (formally called Azure SQL Data Warehouse), it makes for some very compelling reporting performance options when combined with Power BI. In this blog I’ll … Continue reading →
Just wanted to make everyone aware of my latest presentations that I recently uploaded. Details below. I also have a list of all my presentations with slide decks here. Azure Synapse Analytics Overview Azure Synapse Analytics is Azure SQL Data Warehouse … Continue reading →
Almost lost in all the announcements from Ignite was a bunch of amazing new features that were added to the Provisioned Resources/SQL Pool section (read SQLDW functionalities) side of Azure Synapse Analytics (formally called Azure SQL Data Warehouse). Here is … 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, and I will follow-up with more details in future … Continue reading →
Introduced in April 2019, Databricks Delta Lake is, in short, a transactional storage layer that runs on top of cloud storage such as Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen2 and adds a layer of reliability to organizational data lakes by … Continue reading →
With data lakes becoming popular, and Azure Data Lake Store (ADLS) Gen2 being used for many of them, a common question I am asked about is “How can I access data in ADLS Gen2 instead of a copy of the … Continue reading →
A brand new product by Microsoft called Azure Data Share was recently announced. It is in public preview. To explain the product in short, any data which resides in Azure storage can be securely shared between a data provider and … Continue reading →
I did a couple of recent podcasts that I wanted to mention: The first one was with Kirby Repko from the YouTube channel SQLTalk: Modern Data Warehouse Design with James Serra (15 minutes). Check out his playlist of other useful … Continue reading →
Below are the top 12 questions I am seeing from customers looking to migrate on-prem SQL Server to Azure, and the blogs that I have wrote that try to answer each question (I have updated most of these blogs): How … Continue reading →
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 →
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 →
The Microsoft Power Platform consists of three products: Power BI, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow (now called Power Automate). I find customers are confused on the use cases of these products and how they compare to other products (Azure Functions, Logic … Continue reading →