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 from Mashable about the bot that Microsoft has on the WeChat network.  If you’ve been chatting to Xiaoice, then you’ve potentially been taken in by a program.  Microsoft’s been running a bot on the network that is focusing on conversations versus completing tasks.  It’s pretty interesting stuff, check it out.

Last Week’s Popular Posts

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

1. 31 Days of SSIS – The Introduction (801)
2. Get Just The Tools: SSMS Download (351)
3. 31 Days of SSIS – Raw Files Are Awesome (1/31) (328)
4. 31 Days of SSIS as a Book (279)
5. Looking to SQL Server 2014 High Availability In Standard Edition (174)
6. XQuery for the Non-Expert – Value (163)
7. Security Questions: Difference Between db_datawriter and db_ddladmin? (144)
8. 31 Days of SSIS – Generating Row Numbers (23/31) (116)
9. 10 Monthly Maintenance Tasks for SQL Server (90)
10. 31 Days of SSIS – 10 Things About Expressions (16/31) (82)

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. Microsoft may be running the biggest Turing test in history [33 clicks]
2. Querying the VMware vCenter Database (VCDB) for Performance and Configuration Information [19 clicks]
3. Indexing for GROUP BY [19 clicks]
4. Tuning Tip: Identifying Overlapping Statistics [18 clicks]
5. Importance of how you run consistency checks [18 clicks]
6. Open Problems in Transaction Processing (Part 2 of 3): Many-Core CPU Architectures [17 clicks]
7. Statistics (Part 7) – Magic Density [17 clicks]
8. DBCC CHECKDB scalability and performance benchmarking on SSDs [17 clicks]
9. Optimize Heap Memory Settings for Analysis Services Tabular 2012/2014 #ssas #tabular [17 clicks]
10. Microsoft Develops a Linux-Based Operating System – Azure Cloud Switch [14 clicks]
11. Twitter’s Biggest Problem? Its Flawed Design [14 clicks]
12. Big Data Falls Off the Hype Cycle [13 clicks]
13. Text Mining with R [13 clicks]
14. SQL Server 2016 : Performance Impact of Always Encrypted [12 clicks]
15. DR Planning in Azure Requires More Than Replicating VMs to Another Data Center [10 clicks]
16. 7 Common Biases That Skew Big Data Results [8 clicks]
17. What Is the Internet of Things, Anyway? [Infographic] [8 clicks]
18. Communication Breakdown in the Windy City [7 clicks]
19. What’s machine learning? It depends on who you ask [6 clicks]
20. Basic, Standard, and Premium Preview for Azure SQL Database [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. 31 Days of SSIS Conclusion (2011-02-10)
2. Can You Dig It? – Find Estimated Cost (2011-02-11)
3. Database File Information (2009-02-12)
4. Please, no TRIM()? (2010-02-12)
5. T-SQL Tuesday – Powershell and Perfmon Results – #TSQL2sDay (2013-02-12)
6. Running SQLIO with Multiple Files (2013-02-13)
7. Troubleshooting Permission Issues with CREDENITIALS (2009-02-13)
8. Writing A Month Long Blog Series (2011-02-14)

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. When These Drummers Look Up, No One Could Believe Their Next Move [41 clicks]
2. Dumb-ass stuff we need to stop saying to Dads. [36 clicks]
3. University of Graz Study Finds Vegetarians Are Unhealthier, More Mentally Disturbed Than Meat-Lovers [35 clicks]
4. That Time Xbox 360’s Uno Game Was Flooded With Dick Pics [8 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?