Here are the links for this week.

• SQL Server:
  • Kendra Little’s Can High MaxDOP make a query SLOWER? explores the relation between the MAXDOP value and query performance. Having a high value doesn’t necessarily mean better performance. In fact, it can mean worse performance.
  • Daniel Farina’s Understanding SQL Server Memory-Optimized Tables Hash Indexes provides a detailed explanation of hash indexes, used with SQL Server’s in-memory tables  and their advantages and disadvantages.
  • In SQL Wizardry Episode One – Joins, and SQL Wizardry Part 2 – Select, beyond the basics, Christian Graus presents the first two of a series of articles on SQL. They cover, well, Joins and the basics of the SELECT clause.
  • Microsoft’s SQL Server CAT Team’s Be aware of the difference in isolation levels if porting an application from Windows Azure SQL DB to SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machine presents some key differences in isolation levels between Windows Azure SQL Databases and SQL Server running in Windows Azure VMs.
  • James Serra’s Entity Data Modeling with Visual Studio presents some of the data modelling options available, while focusing a bit more specifically on the Entity Data Modelling tool available with Visual Studio.

• Web Design and Development:
  • Terry Mun’s Responsive Photosets, is a very interesting and amazing looking article on creating responsive photosets, using CSS and jQuery.
  • Paul Chavard’s Ember.js Advanced Patterns is a video presentation on the use of Ember Data to build large Ember.js applications.
  • 50 Javascript Tools & Resources from 2013 presents SpeckyBoy Editors’s 2013 top 50 favorite Javascript tools and resources.
  • Dudley Storey’s Introduction to Preprocessors is an introductory article explaining the role of shortcuts, preprocessors and postprocessors in a web development workflow.

• Software Development:
  • Frank Buschmann and Kevlin Henney’s Architecture and Agility: Married, Divorced, or Just Good Friends? is an interesting article that tries to address the relationship between architecture and process, both generically and more specifically in the context of an Agile development process.
  • Adrian Smith’s 7 Deadly Sins of Automated Software Testing is a video presentation on automated testing common mistakes and how to avoid them.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. Happy New Year.