It’s SFTW Time, I hope you’ve had a great week!

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I don’t typically syndicate (that’s share using RSS technology to you non bloggers) the weekly round-up to SQL Server Central but today I decided to make an exception. To those new folks joining us, welcome to SFTW!

The BIG talk in the community this week has been concerning the recent Yahoo announcement to call an end to their remote working practices. There’s been some great written posts to express both sides of the debate and we’ve been sharing them in the discussions on the Community Forum so do stop by to have your say on the matter.

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

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  Battenburg

  The Accidental Architect - Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter) discusses the changing landscape of the Data Professional and what it means for each of us.

• Cost Threshold for Parallelism - How can you determine a suitable value for your environment and what’s the precedence between the various parallelism configurations, courtesy of Chris McGowan (Blog|Twitter).
• Disabling vs. Dropping Indexes - A look at the difference between these two administrative actions and why you might want to pursue them, from Jes Borland (Blog|Twitter).
• Follow up on Ad Hoc TVP contention - Michael J. Swart (Blog|Twitter) sharing an update to his recent performance troubleshooting case. Make sure to read the original as the walk-through explanation of his methodology is excellent. The research and results of which lead to the creation of the post Temp table caching improvement for table valued parameters in SQL Server 2012 - CSS SQL Server Engineers (Blog)
• Execution Plan Sanitizer v2 - Jonathan Kehayias (Blog|Twitter) shares an update to his latest community tool, to make sharing your execution plans safer for the security concious.
• Why Working Remote is TEH Awesome - Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter) shares his thoughts on remote working, and offers what I consider to be one of the more balanced and intelligent discussions following the recent Yahoo announcement.
• how Hadoop can disrupt the database industry - A non SQL Server post (I know I know, just read it. It’s good for you to broaden your outlook).
• Extract, Transform, Loud Noises - Jeremiah Peschka (Blog|Twitter) on why ETL remains the most difficult part of database projects.
• Statistics on Ascending Keys - An excellent article on SQL Server statistics from Benjamin Nevarez (Blog|Twitter). Another must read this week folks.
• Finding SQL Server Installs Using Powershell - A quick dose of PowerShell magic from Wes Brown (Blog|Twitter).
• Will a COPY_ONLY backup initialise the log chain? - A closer look at database backups to set up a SQL 2012 Availability Groups, from Jim McLeod (Blog|Twitter).
• Log Shipping: Preparing for Disaster - A fundamentals tutorial video here shared by Brent Ozar (Blog|Twitter) and presented by Jes Borland (Blog|Twitter).

Community Forum Conversations

These are some of the discussions going on right now in the SQLBrit Community Forum

• What the (choose your favourite expletive) were Yahoo thinking?
• DBA Automated Tasks ~ What Are Some Top Fav’s
• Complete newbie taking the plunge

UK SQL Server Upcoming Events

Use the SQL Server Event Calendar to keep informed of all upcoming SQL Server events, User Groups, and training opportunities here in the UK. You can also add this calendar alongside you existing Google calendar.

Misc. Technology Posts

• Being a Remote Worker Sucks – Long Live the Remote Worker
• Killing off cash: Could new tech mean the end of money?
• TED 2013: SpaceTop 3D see-through computer revealed