Here are the links for the past week.

• SQL Server:
  • Kendra Little’s SQL Server DMVs that Lie addresses some misleading or not completely accurate information provided by some of the SQL Server Dynamic Management Views.
  • Ami Levin’s SQL Server Optimizer – Under the Hood Part 1 is a part of a series on the SQL Server Optimizer. The article addresses partial aggregates, something the optimizer uses to reduce the number of records joined in certain joins. The article also includes links to other articles that address physical join operators.
  • Brent Ozar’s How to Cache Stored Procedure Results provides an interesting suggestion on how to cache stored procedure results.
  • Paul White’s Indexed Views and Statistics addresses the automatic generation of statistics for indexed views, presenting the requirements for SQL Server to create and maintain them and example queries that fulfill those requirements.
  • Denny Cherry’s Indexes on foreign keys can make a big difference shows, through a quick example, the improvement that can result from the use of indexes on foreign keys.
  • Michael Otey’s Hot Database Industry Trends presents some of the technological trends used in databases, covering the use of SSDs, Software Defined Networking and In memory OLTP.

• Web Design and Development:
  • Craig McKeachie’s Choosing a JavaScript MVC Framework is an excellent and comprehensive overview of the current popular choices for Javascript libraries and frameworks.
  • Bennett Feely’s CSS Blend Modes could be the next big thing in Web Design  presents CSS blend mode related features that are expected to be available in browsers in a near future.
  • Sandeep Panda’s An Overview of JavaScript Promises and A Deeper Dive Into JavaScript Promises are two articles that present Promise, a Javascript API that has been recently implemented by Chrome and the nightly build of Firefox. 
  • Amber Leigh Turner’s 10 Web design trends you can expect to see in 2014 presents web design trends that will be stronger in 2014, covering areas from typography to simple color schemes or long scrolling sites.
  • Craig Buckler’s 10 Web Predictions for 2014 presents, ahem, 10 predictions related to the web and web development, for 2014.

• Software Development:
  • Dev Nambi’s Agile Database Development is an interesting article addressing the application of Agile methodologies to database development. 
  • Steve Rogalski’s Trends in Agile Software is a video presentation about trends and experimentation going on related to Agile methodologies.
  • Joe Little’s When should we do Agile? provides some advice on deciding whether an Agile approach should be used for a specific project.
  • Yuval Yeret’s Tracking Schedule Progress in Agile is very interesting article that provides advice to managers on what to look for and some concerns that must be taken, when tracking progress in projects using Agile methodologies.
  • Werner Schuster’s Software Development Trends for 2014 actually makes more questions than predictions on software development trends for 2014, but the article is still very interested to read.

• Big Data / BI:
  • Jeremiah Peschka’s The Year in Hadoop: 2013 is a video presentation on the evolution of Hadoop in 2013.
  • Gagan Mehra’s Big Data 2.0: the next generation of Big Data explains how Big Data is entering a new generation of systems focus on speed better data quality and applications – thousands of applications that will generalize the access to big data.

• Professional Development:
  • Amy Jollymore’s 7 Ways to be a Better Programmer in 2014 makes a few recommendations on how to become a better programmer.

• Random Stuff:
  • Andrew Binstock’s The Best of 2013 provides a list of the most popular Dr. Dobbs articles, in multiple ares, from 2013.
  • Brent Ozar’s Our Favorite Links of 2013 is a video presenting the “Ozarians” favorite links of 2013 on multiple subjects, from SQL Server, to career advice or what you should not say in a presentation.

That’s it. Thanks for reading.