It’s Monday time for this week’s weekly 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 by Thomas Kejser that challenges the best practice of only having a single transaction log.  If you’ve considered breaking apart databases to support additional transaction log throughput, then this is an article you probably want to read first.

Last Week’s Popular Posts

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

1. 31 Days of SSIS – The Introduction (748)
2. 31 Days of SSIS – Raw Files Are Awesome (1/31) (361)
3. Get Just The Tools: SSMS Download (351)
4. 31 Days of SSIS as a Book (342)
5. Looking to SQL Server 2014 High Availability In Standard Edition (192)
6. Security Questions: Difference Between db_datawriter and db_ddladmin? (149)
7. 31 Days of SSIS – Using Breakpoints (2/31) (135)
8. XQuery for the Non-Expert – Value (121)
9. The Side Effect of NOLOCK (119)
10. 31 Days of SSIS – Generating Row Numbers (23/31) (108)

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. Adding another transaction log file to Gain Performance [31 clicks]
2. How Machine Learning Works, As Explained By Google [16 clicks]
3. Under The Hood With SQL Server Batch Mode Part 3: Sequential Scan and Join Scalability [14 clicks]
4. The Benefits Employees Want Most [13 clicks]
5. Improve Your Writing to Improve Your Credibility [12 clicks]
6. Introducing Managed Backups in SQL Server 2014 [12 clicks]
7. FIX: SOS_CACHESTORE spinlock contention on ad hoc SQL Server plan cache [11 clicks]
8. Something’s Brewing with Azure Data Factory – Part 3 [11 clicks]
9. A couple of small issues with Hekaton samples [10 clicks]
10. SQL Server Availability Group Configurations With NO Domain Requirement [9 clicks]
11. How to Set Up Managed Backup in SQL Server 2014 [9 clicks]
12. Comparing Windows Azure Virtual Machine Performance [9 clicks]
13. Powershell in a Month Day 8 – Objects: data by another name [9 clicks]
14. Why would you want to name a transaction? [8 clicks]
15. Public Speaking Isn’t Just for Your Audience [8 clicks]
16. SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP Architecture and Data Storage [8 clicks]
17. Powershell in a Month Day 10 – Formatting [7 clicks]
18. Hekaton with a twist: In-memory TVPs – Part 1 [6 clicks]
19. Get started with SQL Database Dynamic Data Masking [6 clicks]
20. Applied Statistical Theory: Belief Networks [6 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. Can You Dig It? – Missing Indexes (2010-12-14)
2. Generating RING_BUFFER_OOM Errors (2010-12-15)
3. Viewing RING_BUFFER_OOM Errors (2010-12-15)
4. Index Analysis: The Re-Return (2012-12-18)
5. Can You Dig It? – SHOWPLAN XML Structure (2010-12-20)
6. Can You Dig It? – StmtUseDb Element (2010-12-21)
7. It’s A Data Type Conversion Chart (2012-12-21)

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. Goldman Sachs on Microsoft: ‘We Were Wrong’ [164 clicks]
2. 10 Franchises That Swept the Nation in 2015 [34 clicks]
3. The “Sitting Is Killing You” Infographic Shows Just How Bad Prolonged Sitting Is [26 clicks]
4. How I hacked online dating [18 clicks]
5. Microsoft’s Xbox Live service facing numerous issues, Phantom Squad claims responsibility [7 clicks]
6. ‘Phantom Squad’ threatens Xbox Live and PSN outages over Christmas [7 clicks]
7. Bungie Bounty – Sparrow Racing League [6 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?