Top 3 Most Popular Posts of 2020

So, I realize it’s now almost April of 2021 when I’m posting this. Normally this sort of post would come out in January for the previous year. However, I have a reason for this being late and I’ll actually post about that separately.

Showing My Blog Some Love

In mid-2020 I decided to give my blog more attention. there were a number of reasons for this. First, I’d already spent a fair amount of money over the years on hosting and related things so I didn’t want to waste that. Second, I really wanted to try to start giving back to the SQL Server community. I have been the recipient of a lot of learning and help through a number of regular, and occasional, bloggers. I have also purchased and mostly read my fair share of SQL Server books, which was another way I had been helped by the community. Third, I wanted a place to record my own troubleshooting and learning so when I needed to do something again, I would have a record of what to do. By the way, I have seen this repeatedly listed as a reason that someone blogs.

Blog Posts by Month

So, here is the break down of the number of posts by month for 2020:

  • April – 1
  • July – 1 This was the last week of the month and marks my decision to start blogging more consistently.
  • Aug – 3
  • Sept – 4
  • Oct – 4
  • Nov – 7 – I had built a good backlog of posts that were ready to publish and nearly reached my goal of posting twice a week for the entire month
  • Dec – 4

To get the list of the most popular blog posts I looked at Google Analytics PageView data for Jan 1, 2020 – Dec 31, 2020.

Popular Post # 1

The most viewed page based on this data had 354 views and was part 1 of a series on PowerShell for the DBA. The series was meant to show some “getting started” type techniques so that someone could open PowerShell and start exploring what the tool could do for them as a DBA. I explored how to find commands that might be of interest and how to use the help system in PowerShell to figure out how to use the command. I also provided some practical examples of PowerShell to use in every day scenarios.

https://leemarkum.com/archive/2020/11/introduction-to-powershell-for-the-dba-part-1/ 

Popular Post #2

The second most viewed page had 332 views and covered 5 different ways to make a SQL Server backup. Backups are so important, especially in the world of data. They give you and your business a way to recover data that has been lost or damaged in some way. As a Database Administrator, you need to be able to recover and that all starts with taking backups. That seems obvious but I still read stories of businesses that aren’t even backing up their databases. If you do have backups, you also need also to test whether you can use those backups to actually restore data.

https://leemarkum.com/archive/2020/09/5-ways-to-make-sql-server-backups/ 

Popular Post #3

The third most viewed post had 273 views and was about using a new feature in SQL Server 2019. This feature is based on the polybase technology that arrived in SQL Server 2016. However, the feature has now been extended to allow SQL Server to have external tables to ole db and odbc sources, such as SQL Server, MS Access, and, yes, even things like Oracle and IBM iSeries/AS400. The external, or virtual table, uses mostly built-in drivers. With this feature yo can run SELECT statements against remote data sources without a linked server. The environment I’m in has an AS400/IBM iSeries so I wanted to see if I could get the feature to work with that data source.

https://leemarkum.com/archive/2020/04/querying-an-as400-using-sql-server-2019-data-virtualization/

There you have it. I hope you enjoyed these posts in 2020, and if you haven’t seen them, give them a click and read through the information. I hope you learn something from the posts and if you have questions or comments reach out to me here, or on Twitter, and I’ll be happy to talk to you.

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