It’s Something For The Weekend(SFTW) time, I hope you’ve had a great week!

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been a tad quieter in the SQL community of late. No not because I’ve been slacking off dear reader but because I needed to focus my efforts in on a single goal in order to make it happen.

I’m delighted to say that last week I was awarded the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) certification for SQL Server. It’s been quite a journey but we got there chaps. I say we because I could not have done it without the support, guidance and teachings of you, the community.

I’d particularly like to call out the team at SQLskills.com for the outstanding quality of training they provide, as well as the huge volume of resources and insight they make available to our community. I’d also like to thank all the chaps over on the SQL Brit Community Forum (Mr Yates in particular) for their passion, drive and motivation for the SQL community.

Cheers everyone!

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Technology Stuff. Enjoy….

• What Queries are Failing in My SQL Server? – A real world troubleshooting case shared courtesy of Kendra Little (Blog|Twitter),  demonstrating how to put Extended Events to work for you.
• Experiments with SQL Server VLFs, Part 1 – An in depth analysis looking at the performance cost of VLFs in SQL Server with Glenn Berry (Blog|Twitter).
• AlwaysOn Availability Groups: The Average of its Parts – An excellent architectural look at AlwaysOn AGs with Jeremiah Peschka (Blog|Twitter). Discover if in principle scaling out your reads via this technology is the right direction for you.
• ALTER DATABASE failed. The default collation of database cannot be set – Jonathan Kehayias (Blog|Twitter) shares the details of a rather unique upgrade challenge he encountered recently.
• Lessons From Sherlock Holmes – A wonderful and creative look at the art of troubleshooting in SQL Server, courtesy of Michael J. Swart (Blog|Twitter).
• A Tour of the Hekaton AMR Tool – Benjamin Nevarez (Blog|Twitter) shows us how to use the AMR Tool to identify good candidate objects for migration to HEKATON in SQL Server 2014.
• A Dynamic Duo: Data Compression and Backup Compression – Bob Pusateri (Blog|Twitter) walks us through the effects of using both these SQL Server compression features and interestingly whether or not they are compounded.
• Successful Cloud Projects Start With The Plumbing – Valuable advice for those considering Cloud Adoption from Buck Woody (Blog|Twitter).
• 8 Ways To Be An Awesome Data Professional – In addition to Subscribing to SFTW, there are apparently 8 more ways to be awesome Data Professional. Here with the insight, it’s Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter).
• How are COALESCE and ISNULL different? – Taking a closer look at these two functions with Kenneth Fisher (Blog).
• Using Policy-Based Management to Update PAGE_VERIFY Settings – Why not make DBA life easier for yourself with the help of PBM. Frank Gill (Blog|Twitter) shows us how.

SQL Community Forum

These are some of hot topics being discussed right now in the SQLBrit Community Forum by ambitious Data Pros just like you. Join the conversation.

• To DBCC CheckDB or To Not DBCC CheckDB That Is The Question
• Considering switching job
• College courses for a DBA in US
  

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Misc. Technology Posts

• 27 Things Only Developers Will Find Funny
• What’s The Biggest Mistake You Make Each Day? – Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter)
• Luxury toilet users warned of hardware flaw – BBC New Technology
• Review: The Blackberry Z10 – Scott Hanselman
• LG puts buttons on back of G2 smartphon – BBC New Technology