It’s Monday time for this week’s blog and twitter round-up for last week. If you haven’t already, follow me on twitter (@StrateSQL). This is a good chance to catch up on data platform technology and career related information I’ve shared in the last week and activity on this blog.

Most Popular Article Shared

Last weeks most popular link is an article from Denny Cherry (Blog | @MrDenny) on the foolish trend of using SAN snapshots for backups.  If you’ve considered this, or heard people talking about this, take a read on Denny’s post.  It’ll help you avoid an RGE (definition in the post).

Last Week’s Popular Posts

The most popular posts on this blog in the week are:

1. 31 Days of SSIS – The Introduction (654)
2. 31 Days of SSIS as a Book (312)
3. Get Just The Tools: SSMS Download (311)
4. 31 Days of SSIS – Raw Files Are Awesome (1/31) (291)
5. XQuery for the Non-Expert – Value (145)
6. Looking to SQL Server 2014 High Availability In Standard Edition (135)
7. 31 Days of SSIS – Generating Row Numbers (23/31) (104)
8. Security Questions: What permissions are required to create temporary tables? (103)
9. Security Questions: Removing Logins From Databases (98)
10. The Side Effect of NOLOCK (94)

Last Week’s Top 20 “Reading” Links

Along with the most popular 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. Why aren’t SAN snapshots a good backup solution for SQL Server? [101 clicks]
2. Eight Different Ways to Clear the SQL Server Plan Cache [47 clicks]
3. SQL Server Parallel Query Placement Decision Logic [30 clicks]
4. Traces of this being none of your fucking business found in Prince’s system | City Pages [23 clicks]
5. STRING_SPLIT() in SQL Server 2016 : Follow-Up #1 [17 clicks]
6. Real-Time Operational Analytics: Compression Delay option with NCCI and the performance [17 clicks]
7. SQL 2016 – It Just Runs Faster: -T1117 and -T1118 changes for TEMPDB and user databases [16 clicks]
8. SQL 2016 features: Stretch Database [16 clicks]
9. SQL Server 2016 Discovery Days [15 clicks]
10. SQL 2016 – It Just Runs Faster: Indirect Checkpoint Default [15 clicks]
11. How to Run DBCC CHECKDB for In-Memory OLTP (Hekaton) Tables [15 clicks]
12. SQL Server 2016 – Making DBCC CHECKDB Faster [14 clicks]
13. April updates to Plan Comparison Tool [14 clicks]
14. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – Building amazing Power BI reports [12 clicks]
15. Announcing the General Availability of Azure Data Catalog [12 clicks]
16. The Pains of Filtered Indexes [12 clicks]
17. The Joys of Filtered Indexes [11 clicks]
18. Should You Be a Generalist or a Specialist? [10 clicks]
19. Unique Indexes and Row Modifications: Weird [10 clicks]
20. SQL 2016 – It Just Runs Faster: Dynamic Memory Object (CMemThread) Partitioning [10 clicks]

Last Week’s Posts From Previous Years

Sometimes the most useful content on a blog wasn’t written in the past week, it’s often other articles shared in the past that resonate with readers. Check out the following links that I published in past years over the past week:

1. This blog entry brought to you by the procedure “sp_MSForEachDB” (2006-05-09)
2. Disabling Export Options in Reporting Services (2006-05-10)
3. Get Just The Tools: SSMS Download (2013-05-15)

Other Items 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. The Sinking of Boaty McBoatface — And Why It’s a Big Problem [22 clicks]
2. How this tiny private college maintains a nearly $500 million endowment without charging tuition [17 clicks]
3. How to Build an Active, Outdoor Lifestyle With Your Kids [9 clicks]
4. The Price Of Being A Hero — Would It Cost More To Be Captain America Or Iron Man? [9 clicks]
5. Boogie Storm make Simon’s dream come true! [6 clicks]
6. Pizza Bird [6 clicks]
7. “I agree in principle…” [6 clicks]
8. India Could Achieve 33% Tree Cover with New Plan [5 clicks]
9. Not All Practice Makes Perfect [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?