Common Data Model
The Common Data Model (CDM) is a shared data model that is a place to keep all common data to be shared between applications and data sources. Another way to think of it is is a way to organize data … Continue reading →
James Serra
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.
Microsoft Build event announcements
Another Microsoft event and another bunch of exciting announcements. At the Microsoft Build event last week, the major announcements in the data platform and AI space were: Machine Learning Services enhancements In Private Preview is a new visual interface for … Continue reading →
Where should I clean my data?
As a follow-up to my blogs What product to use to transform my data? and Should I load structured data into my data lake?, I wanted to talk about where you should you clean your data when building a modern data warehouse … Continue reading →
Two more of my presentations
I recently made available two more presentations that you might find helpful. Feel free to download them and present them to others (adding a line that you got them from me is all I ask). There is a full list of all … Continue reading →
Azure Data Explorer
Azure Data Explorer (ADX) was announced as generally available on Feb 7th. In short, ADX is a fully managed data analytics service for near real-time analysis on large volumes of data streaming (i.e. log and telemetry data) from such sources … Continue reading →
My latest presentations
I frequently present at user groups, and always try to create a brand new presentation to keep things interesting. We all know technology changes so quickly so there is no shortage of topics! There is a list of all my presentations with … Continue reading →
Azure Data Lake Store Gen2 is GA
Azure Data Lake Store (ADLS) Gen2 was made generally available on February 7th. In short, ADLS Gen2 is the best of the previous version of ADLS (now called ADLS Gen1) and Azure Blob Storage. ADLS Gen2 is built on Blob storage … Continue reading →
Storage options for SQL Server database files in Azure
If you are using SQL Server in an Azure VM (IaaS) you have a number of options of where to store the database files (.mdf, .ldf, and .ndf). Most customers use managed disks, available in a number of offerings: Standard HDD, Standard … Continue reading →
What product to use to transform my data?
If you are building a big data solution in the cloud, you will likely be landing most of the source data into a data lake. And much of this data will need to be transformed (i.e. cleaned and joined together … Continue reading →
Azure Data Factory Data Flow
Azure Data Factory v2 (ADF) has a new feature in public preview called Data Flow. I have usually described ADF as an orchestration tool instead of an Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) tool since it has the “E” and “L” in ETL but … Continue reading →
Should I load structured data into my data lake?
With data lakes becoming very popular, a common question I have been hearing often from customers is, “Should I load structured/relational data into my data lake?”. I talked about this a while back in my blog post What is a data … Continue reading →
Premium blob storage
As a follow-up to my blog Azure Archive Blob Storage, Microsoft has released another storage tier called Azure Premium Blob Storage (announcement). It is in private preview in US East 2, US Central and US West regions. This is a performance … Continue reading →
SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters
At the Microsoft Ignite conference, Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2019 is now in preview and that SQL Server 2019 will include Apache Spark and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) for scalable compute and storage. This new architecture that combines together the … Continue reading →
Azure SQL Database Hyperscale
At Microsoft Ignite, one of the announcements was for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale, which was made available in public preview October 1st, 2018 in 12 different Azure regions. SQL Database Hyperscale is a new SQL-based and highly scalable service tier for single databases … Continue reading →
Azure Database Migration Service (DMS)
As I first mentioned in my blog Microsoft database migration tools, the Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) is a PaaS solution that makes it easy to migrate from on-prem/RDS to Azure and one database type to another. I’ll give a brief overview … Continue reading →
Azure SQL Database Read Scale-Out
Read Scale-Out is a little-known feature that allows you to load balance Azure SQL Database read-only workloads using the capacity of read-only replicas, for free. As mentioned in my blog Azure SQL Database high availability, each database in the Premium tier (DTU-based … Continue reading →
Azure SQL Database disaster recovery
My last blog post was on Azure SQL Database high availability and I would like to continue along that discussion with a blog post about disaster recovery in Azure SQL Database. First, a clarification on the difference between high availability and … Continue reading →
Azure SQL Database high availability
In this blog I want to talk about how Azure SQL Database achieves high availability. One of the major benefits from moving from on-prem SQL Server to Azure SQL Database is how much easier it is to have high availability … Continue reading →
Power BI: Dataflows
Dataflows, previously called Common Data Service for Analytics as well as Datapools, will be in preview soon and I wanted to explain in this blog what it is and how it can help you get value out of your data … Continue reading →
Power BI new feature: Composite models
There are two really great features just added to Power BI that I wanted to blog about: Composite models and Dual storage mode. This is part of the July release for Power BI Desktop and it is in preview (see … Continue reading →