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 blog post by Brent Ozar (Blog | @BrentO) on SQL Server licensing.  In his post, he does a great job of simplifying the overly complex issue of licensing SQL Server.  While many of us aren’t in the position of buying and selling SQL Server licenses, many of us do have an impact on the number of instances installed and the architecture of solutions.  If it’s your responsibility to do either of those activities, you should have a bit of a background on licensing, about as much as Brent provides.

Last Week’s Popular Posts

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

1. 31 Days of SSIS – The Introduction (614)
2. Get Just The Tools: SSMS Download (595)
3. 31 Days of SSIS – Raw Files Are Awesome (1/31) (330)
4. 31 Days of SSIS as a Book (317)
5. Looking to SQL Server 2014 High Availability In Standard Edition (182)
6. Security Questions: Difference Between db_datawriter and db_ddladmin? (174)
7. The Side Effect of NOLOCK (167)
8. XQuery for the Non-Expert – Value (155)
9. 10 Monthly Maintenance Tasks for SQL Server (136)
10. Security Questions: Grant Permissions to All Stored Procedures (116)

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 SQL Server Licensing Simplified into 7 Rules [28 clicks]
2. Benefits for Some, All or Only a Few [15 clicks]
3. VMware and DBAs [14 clicks]
4. Is Your SAN Administrator Out to Get You? [13 clicks]
5. Stop Touching the Public Database Role [13 clicks]
6. SQL Server 2016 Security Roadmap Session Notes #MSIgnite [11 clicks]
7. SELECT INTO and non-nullable columns [11 clicks]
8. Mitigating Index Fragmentation [10 clicks]
9. PASS Board Update: April 2015 [10 clicks]
10. T-SQL Tuesday #65 – Learning Computed Columns for XML [9 clicks]
11. Azure SQL Database Firewall Settings [8 clicks]
12. Can DBCC SHRINKFILE Cause Blocking in SQL Server? [7 clicks]
13. Are Index ‘Included’ Columns in Your Multi-Column Statistics? [7 clicks]
14. Inconsistent analysis in read committed using locking [6 clicks]
15. Query Hash Formula Changes Between Versions [6 clicks]
16. SQL Server 2016 public preview coming this summer [5 clicks]
17. When is a Hyper-V Virtual Machine Not Really a Virtual Machine? [5 clicks]
18. Speaker of the Month: May 2015 [5 clicks]
19. Locking, isolation, and read consistency [5 clicks]
20. Episode 174: Big Data with Lara Rubbelke and James Baker [4 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. Get Just The Tools: SSMS Download (2013-05-15)

Did you brace yourself?  That was a long list.

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. 13 Pics That Only Become Inappropriate If You Keep Staring At Them [165 clicks]
2. 9 things you never noticed in ‘Back To The Future’ [50 clicks]
3. 10 years ago today, Internet history was changed by an impatient, chicken-eating man. [31 clicks]
4. The All-Time Most Valuable Comic Book Movie Franchise Is Surprisingly Not Batman [31 clicks]
5. Shipwrecks spotted in crystal-clear waters of Lake Michigan [23 clicks]
6. Video game execution watched by 325,000 players [21 clicks]
7. Angry Starbucks manager flips out on customer over a cookie straw [18 clicks]
8. Shameless Girls Are Using Tinder To Trick Guys Into Buying Them Pizza [13 clicks]
9. The Most Thrilling Roller Coasters Opening in 2015 [9 clicks]
10. First ‘launched wing roller coaster’ to open in Indiana [9 clicks]
11. There’s an incredible amount of detail in this 10,000-brick Lego Millennium Falcon [8 clicks]
12. Support the Fosters [4 clicks]
13. Blues legend B.B. King dies at age 89 in Las Vegas [3 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?