It’s Monday time for this week’s weekly link round-up.  If you want to catch these links “live” (so exciting), follow me on twitter (@StrateSQL).  And see these throughout the day as I tweet out links of things I find interesting.  While these links aren’t the answer to life, the universe, and everything, they often share a few things about SQL Server and related technology topics that others may find useful. The links included in this summary are those prefixed with ”Reading” and are items I’ve read over the past few days, usually after hours when sharing would be less than useful, and spaced out to avoid spamming.  The content of the links usually pertain to SQL Server, technology, and career topics; which I think others would find useful.

The Most Popular “Reading” Link

This weeks most popular item is an article about using flash across the SQL Server stack.  Now, this isn’t about the use of Adobe Flash, but rather the power and benefit that comes when leveraging flash storage with SQL Server.  This article focuses on EMC flash solutions, but I’ve also worked with Violin Memory flash technologies, and I can atest to the performance improvements that people are seeing.  If you have a storage bottleneck, flash technology can be a viable scale up solution.  If you haven’t been checking out flash technologies yet, do yourself a favor and take read through this article.

Reading: "Leveraging Flash across the Microsoft SQL Server Stack" http://t.co/SfLhw8qhjQ #sqlserver

— Jason Strate (@StrateSQL) March 6, 2014

Last week’s top 20 “Reading” Links

Along with the top link, here are the top twenty items relating to SQL Server, technology and careers that were shared last week.  If you missed them throughout the week, here’s the opportunity to get caught up on some items that other’s read after I linked them out.

1. Leveraging Flash across the Microsoft SQL Server Stack [24 clicks]
2. 10 Reasons to Stop Working So Hard BY Minda Zetlin [22 clicks]
3. 13 Rules For Using Commas Without Looking Like An Idiot [20 clicks]
4. The CASE Statement and Performance [18 clicks]
5. SQL Server 2014 Webinar Series [17 clicks]
6. The gap between data mining and predictive models [16 clicks]
7. How is a Salary is Determined? [14 clicks]
8. Non-Clustered Indexes on Table Variables in SQL Server 2014 [13 clicks]
9. SQL Server 2014: Pushing the Boundaries of In-Memory Performance [12 clicks]
10. How to Break the Conspiracy of Silence [10 clicks]
11. How It Works: Always On–When Is My Secondary Failover Ready? [9 clicks]
12. AlwaysOn in SQL Server 2014 CTP1 [9 clicks]
13. Five Ways to Confront Bullies [9 clicks]
14. Why you should be Spot-Checking Algorithms on your Machine Learning Problems [6 clicks]
15. A Middle Approach to Schema Design in OLTP Applications [6 clicks]
16. Amazon Web Service now offers R on demand [6 clicks]
17. How to analyze Non-Yielding scheduler or Non-yielding IOCP Listener dumps …… [6 clicks]
18. System Center Management Packs for SQL Server 2008 & 2012 Analysis Services [5 clicks]
19. On a SQL Collaboration Quest [3 clicks]
20. Big Data Getting In-Memory Performance Boost: A Tech Round-Up [2 clicks]

Other Stuff Shared

Of course, no week would be complete without a few off-topic links.  These have nothing to do with technology or your career, but they are interesting and worth a second look.

1. Girl costs father $80,000 with ‘SUCK IT’ Facebook post [82 clicks]
2. 14 Fast Food and Restaurant Employees Confess the One Item You Should Never Order [49 clicks]
3. Domino’s Pizza Employee Warning Record [29 clicks]
4. Ban lifted! It’s time for ‘Doctor Who’ Lego [23 clicks]
5. Kevin Bacon on ‘Six Degrees’ game: ‘I was horrified’ [23 clicks]
6. How to get a busy person to respond to your email [15 clicks]
7. This is Your Brain on Khan – A Math MOOC for Everyone [13 clicks]
8. Zen Productivity [5 clicks]

Got something you think I should read and share, leave a comment below.  Also, if you want to see all of the links that were tweeted out last week?