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Microsoft Build event announcements
There were a number of data platform announcements at Microsoft Build yesterday that I wanted to blog about. Everything announced at Build can be found in the Microsoft Build 2022 Book of News....
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Power BI Datamarts
As mentioned in my previous blog about the Microsoft Build event announcements, the biggest news was Power BI Datamarts. This is a new self-service capability included with Power BI Premium (premium...
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Power BI as a enterprise data warehouse solution?
With Power BI continuing to get many great new features, including the latest in Datamarts (see my blog Power BI Datamarts), I’m starting to hear customers ask “Can I just build my entire enterprise...
View ArticleQuestions to ask when designing a data architecture
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...
View ArticlePower BI guidance documentation
Recently there has been a number of great articles published on Power BI that I wanted to make you aware of that go beyond the features descriptions found in the Power BI documentation. These new...
View ArticleHow to keep up with technology
(Side note: There is a “subscribe” button on the right side of my home page if you wish to receive my blogs updates via email as soon as they are published). I have been asked a number of times on how...
View ArticleSynapse database templates info and tips
I had previously blogged about Azure Synapse Analytics database templates, and wanted to follow-up with some notes and tips on that feature as I have been involved on a project that is using it:...
View ArticleData lake architecture
I have had a lot of conversations with customers to help them understand how to design a data lake. I touched on this in my blog Data lake details, but that was written a long time ago so I wanted to...
View ArticleMicrosoft Ignite Announcements Oct 2022
Announced at Microsoft Ignite were some new product features related to data platform and AI. Below are the ones I found most interesting: Azure Cosmos DB adds distributed PostgreSQL support: Azure...
View ArticleAttending and presenting at conferences
I have attended and presented at a ton of conferences over the years (see the entire list at Presentations | James Serra’s Blog). If you are looking to learn a lot about the Microsoft data platform,...
View ArticleSQL Server 2022 is GA!
The big announcement at the PASS Data Community Summit 2022 was that SQL Server 2022 is now generally available. See the official announcement. My top 10 list of new features are: Integration with...
View ArticleMy presentation recordings of data architectures
Over the years I have presented a ton (see the list), and some of those presentations were recorded. I had put some of them on my YouTube channel, but neglected to post some of them (13 in fact). They...
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New year, new role, and new book
Happy new year to everyone! As I enter my 9th year at Microsoft, I have switched roles, and am now an Industry Advisor in Federal Civilian, helping our Federal Civilian customers deliver on their...
View ArticleWhen to have multiple data lakes
A question I get asked frequently from customers when discussing Data lake architecture is “Should I use one data lake for all my data, or multiple lakes?”. Ideally, you would use just one data lake,...
View ArticleNew Microsoft Purview features
Microsoft Purview, formally called Azure Purview (see Azure Purview is generally available) has recently released a number of new cool features. I wanted to call out a few of them: Data Sharing – in...
View ArticleUsing a data lakehouse
As I mentioned in my Data Mesh, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse presentation, the data lakehouse architecture, where you use a data lake with delta lake as a software layer and skip using a relational data...
View ArticleData Marketplace
I question I have been getting from customers lately is about a data marketplace. What is it, and what products can I use to build it? A data marketplace, sometimes called a data exchange, is an online...
View ArticleThe first two chapters of my book are available!
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...
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Build announcement: Microsoft Fabric
The HUGE announcement at Microsoft Build yesterday was Microsoft Fabric (see Introducing Microsoft Fabric: Data analytics for the era of AI), now available in public preview. I have been at Microsoft...
View ArticleMicrosoft Fabric introduction video
I blogged about Microsoft Fabric a few weeks ago, and wanted to follow up with an introduction video that covers the basics so hopefully you will understand the major features of Fabric at a...
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