Press "Enter" to skip to content

Filesystem Enumeration DMV

Erik Darling points out a new DMV in SQL Server 2017:

SQL Server 2017 RC1 dropping recently reminded me of a couple things I wanted to blog about finding in there. One that I thought was rather interesting is a new iTVF called dm_os_enumerate_filesystem. It looks like a partial replacement for xp_cmdshell in that, well, you can do the equivalent of running a dir command, with some filtering.

The addition of a search filter is particularly nice, since the dircommand isn’t exactly robust in that area. If you’ve ever wanted to filter on a date, well… That’s probably when PowerShell got invented.

If I run a simple call to the new function like so…

Click through to see Erik use the new function.