A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Patrick Gruenauer explains the differences between two control statements:
If you are a PowerShell scripter, you may have come across two code statements that are not unique to PowerShell: Break and Throw. In this blog post I will carry out some examples to shed some light on this very important statements.
If you’re confused about when to use which, check out Patrick’s clear explanation.
Comments closedPhil Factor has a new cmdlet for us:
Whatever your development methodology, you need to make changes lightning fast, and the easiest way of doing that is to test frequently. If you are driving this work with PowerShell, which works well, you’ll want to compare the actual results of a process with the expected results. You’re keen to see what’s changed but will often have no idea what to look for beforehand. You need the broad view.
Fine. To do this, you need something that can tell you the differences between two objects. Yes, there is already a cmdlet to do that called Compare-Object. It is useful and ingenious, and works well for what is does, but it doesn’t do enough for our purposes. Let’s run through a few examples, just to explain why I need more for many of the things I do.
Read on to see where Compare-Object could be better and Phil’s solution to the problem.
Robert Cain shows us the basics of functions in Powershell:
Like most languages, PowerShell supports the use of functions. Functions are reusable bits of code with a name wrapped around them. This lets you make multiple calls to your function name allowing you code reuse.
PowerShell actually has two types of functions, Basic and Advanced. Basic functions are a lot like the 1974 VW SuperBeetle I owned back in college. No frills but useful, gets you where you are going. Did 0 to 60 mph in under 5 minutes. Most of the time.
Advanced functions have a lot more capabilities, and are more akin to a Tesla. Lots of fancy design, can do cool things, and depending on your need might be worth the extra investment.
Robert’s post is all about those basic functions, so check it out.
Comments closedRobert Cain takes us through different structured programming constructs in Powershell:
Continuing my series on PowerShell basics, in this installment we’ll talk bout looping in PowerShell. Looping is a mechanism for repeating a set of instructions multiple times, ending once a condition is met. Looping is also known as iterating, as in “iterating over an array”.
Loops continue until one of two things happen. In one type of loop, the loop continues until a certain condition is true. In the second type, the loop will iterate over a collection (also called an array) of objects until the entire collection has been gone through.
Read on for an enumeration of the different types of loops you can create with this language.
Comments closedRobert Cain continues to have fun with Powershell:
In this post, we’ll see how some of PowerShell’s logic branching works. Logic branching is where you execute certain lines of code only when a condition is true.
For all of the examples, we’ll display the code, then under it the result of our code. In this article I’ll be using PowerShell Core, 7.1.3, and VSCode. The examples should work in PowerShell 5.1 in the PowerShell IDE, although they’ve not been tested there.
As always, Robert has a large number of examples here to illuminate the process.
Comments closedRobert Cain continues a series on Powershell data structures:
Hash tables are powerful, flexible items. In some languages, hash tables are also called dictionaries. In this post we’ll start with a few basics, then get into some fun things you can do with hash tables.
A quick note, some documentation calls them a hash table, others read hashtable, one word. For this post I’ll use the two word hash table, but it’s the same thing no matter what documentation or blog you read.
Click through for plenty of examples of what you can do with them.
Comments closedAaron Bertrand powers up for about six episodes straight, but the results are amazing:
In Part 1 of this series, I showed how to use a Visitor pattern to walk through one or more T-SQL statements to identify a problematic pattern where NOLOCK hints are applied to the target of an update or delete. The method in my initial examples was very manual, though, and won’t scale if this problem might be widespread. We need to be able to automate collecting a potentially large number of statements across an entire environment, and then try to eliminate false positives without manual intervention.
Read on to see how you can take what Aaron wrote last time and make it scalable.
Comments closedAlex Stuart performs some calculations:
I recently encountered a requirement to estimate the size of (a lot of) nonclustered indexes on some very large tables due to not having a test box to create them on or the time to build one. I couldn’t find a script to do this, and as any programmer knows, laziness is the real mother of invention, so I wrote one.
This post summarises how we can calculate this and provides a Powershell function to do so.I used Microsoft’s documentation as a basis on how to do it, but as it’s a wall of text that’s a little tricky to follow, I’ll go over the basics here. I’m only covering the leaf levels and non-MAX columns that would create LOB pages – I’ll explain why later.
Click through for the article and to see how Alex’s calculations play out.
Comments closedRobert Cain looks at how arrays operate in Powershell:
In this article, we’ll look at the different ways to use Arrays in PowerShell. We’ll cover the basics, then move onto more advanced topics.
For all of the examples, we’ll display the code, then under it the result of our code. In this article I’ll be using PowerShell Core, 7.1.3, and VSCode. The examples should work in PowerShell 5.1 in the PowerShell IDE, although they’ve not been tested there.
Click through for a variety of tips and tricks when working with arrays.
Comments closedJeffrey Hicks has a use for the Powershell ISE:
Way back before the days of PowerShell Core, or even VS Code for that matter, the PowerShell ISE was the center of my PowerShell world. I spent a lot of time finding ways to make it easier for me to use and to push it to its limits. Naturally, the PowerShell ISE doesn’t play much of a role for me these days. But that may not be true for you. In fact, one area where the ISE can be useful is with remote sessions.
Read on to see how.
Comments closed