Here are the links for the past week.

• SQL Server:
  • Jes Schultz Borland’s Improving the Performance of Backups suggests a few ways to improve the performance of backup operations. The comments also suggest further reading with additional great advice.
  • Hugo Kornelis’s Parameterization and filtered indexes (part 1) and Parameterization and filtered indexes (part 2) address the issue of possible interference from filtered indexes in SQL Server’s ability to perform query parameterization and concludes that, when using filtered indexes, setting the database to use simple parameterization may be a preferable solution to forced parameterization. A good read.
  • Grant Fritchey’s Time for a Quick Rant is an interesting rant about what appears a rather common decision on not performing database backups when “the database is too big to be backed up”. The comments also offer some good advice on how to address backups in situations where the database is really big.
  • Robert L. Soldier’s Schema-only Backups and Restores shows how a backup and restore of a database schema can be done using a DACPAC.
  • Klaus Aschenbrenner’s Myths and Misconceptions about Transaction Isolation Levels provides some insightful advice on transaction isolation levels and how the expected SQL Server behavior regarding isolation levels may be changed, in certain circumstances, by SQL Server.
  • Arshad Ali’s Getting Starting with Change Data Capture (CDC) in SQL Server – Part 1 explains what Change Data Capture (CDC) is and how it can be used to capture data changes in a tracked table.
  • Dinesh Asanka’s Default Database Issues and Best Practices suggests the master database is not the best option for default database and suggests a better alternative.
  • Jason Strate’s Webcast follow-up: the flavors of non-clustered indexes is a very interesting webcast on non-clustered indexes.
  • Daniel Farina’s What’s new in SQL Server 2014? Is it worth the upgrade? covers some of the most relevant new features in SQL Server 2014.
  • Brent Ozar’s sp_Blitz™ v32: Emailing, Serializable Locking, Simultaneous Agent Jobs, and More presents the changes in the latest version of the famous sp_Blitz health check stored procedure.

• Web Design and Development:
  • K. Scott Allen’s AngularJS Fundamentals provides a very useful set of links on Angular JS.
  • Jon Galloway’s Looking at ASP.NET MVC 5.1 and Web API 2.1 – Part 1 – Overview and Enums and Looking at ASP.NET MVC 5.1 and Web API 2.1 – Part 2 – Attribute Routing with Custom Constraints present some of the new features in the recent release of ASP.NET MVC 5.1 and Web API 2.1.
  • Addy Osmani’s Patterns For Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture presents an interesting set of patterns for large-scale Javascript application architecture.
  • Krasimir Tsonev’s Dependency Injection in JavaScript shows how dependency injection can be achieved in JavaScript.
  • Sara Vieira’s How to Kickstart your HTML presents HTML Kickstart, a framework, characterized by its simplicity,that can be used to obtain quick front-end prototypes.

• Cloud computing:
  • Troy Hunt’s With great Azure VM comes great responsibility (which is why you really want an Azure Web Site) compare’s running a web site in an Azure VM vs. an Azure Web Site and explains the advantages of going with the latter.
  • Scott Hanselman’s Introducing Windows Azure WebJobs presents Azure WebJobs, a new feature of Azure WebSites, that allows the execution of regular background jobs and batches.
  • Keith Mayer’s Create Backups of Virtual Machines in Windows Azure by using PowerShell shows how Azure VMs can be backed up using Powershell.
  • Brian Farnhill’s Managing Windows Azure VMs through PowerShell shows how Powershell can be used to perform multiple operations on Windows Azure VMs.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading.