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Category: Powershell

dbops Powershell Module

Published 2022-09-22 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant looks at a useful Powershell module:

Before covering the dbops PowerShell module I want to quickly cover DbUp.

DbUp is a .NET library that you can use to do migration-based deployments. It is open-source and is licensed under the MIT license, which you can read about in the DbUp license file.

According to the official list of supported databases, it allows you to do migration-based deployments to various databases. Such as SQL Server and MySQL. As you will discover later in this post it also works with a newer Azure service as well.

DbUp has been on my to-learn list for a little while, though I haven’t had a chance to dig into it yet.

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Pinging All Day in Powershell

Published 2022-09-16 by Kevin Feasel

Patrick Gruenauer wants to know if a service is up:

Recently, I have created a script that returns a beep sound when the connection is re-established. I would like to share this script here on my website.

Assume your network connectivity is broken. You wait until the connection is restored. In addition, you want to hear a sound when the connection is re-established. For this task, just use my script.

I’ve done some ping -t checks in my day, though never with a beep.

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Getting User Access Lists to All Power BI Reports

Published 2022-09-15 by Kevin Feasel

Tomaz Kastrun wants to know what you can see:

This way, you will have a better view of users, and their access to data and reports (if these are containing sensible data). You can always retrieve the list of workspaces and access the list of all users with the PowerShell cmdlet Get-PowerBIWorkspace.

I have also added the Join-Object module. It can join two objects or two arrays, based on the given matching columns.

Click through for a Powershell script which does the job.

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Try out Chocolatey

Published 2022-09-13 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey makes a recommendation:

Chocolatey, as it says on the web site, is a package manager for Windows. But what does that mean? Basically, a package manager is a central place to install, upgrade and remove software. You get a database of the software you have installed, then it can help you to manage your software. Package managers are built into most operating systems. For example, apt or yum on a Linux box. However, not Windows. That’s where Chocolatey comes in.

I do like Chocolatey a lot as well and not just on VMs that I regularly need to rebuild.

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Powershell Colors and Icons

Published 2022-09-13 by Kevin Feasel

Jeff Hill has fun with terminals:

If you have followed along with me before, chances are you know I like color. Color helps me zoom in on the information I want faster. Color can help me know if I have the right number of curly braces. Modern browsers and word processors show a red squiggly line when you misspell a word. Your eye is drawn to that bit of color that is different than the rest of the page. Keep reading and I’ll show you how to add some spice to your PowerShell experience.

I heartily endorse the mention of Windows Terminal later on. If you haven’t tried it before, it’s a worthy successor to CMD and the basic Powershell terminal.

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SysInternals EULA Acceptance in Powershell

Published 2022-08-29 by Kevin Feasel

Jeff Hicks finds your terms acceptable:

I just saw a very, very handy thing on Twitter where you can set a registry key that will automatically accept all EULA prompts for the SysInternals tools. I know there is a command-line switch I can use, but I never remember to use it. Setting the registry key appears to accept EULAs globally. Naturally, I wanted a PowerShell script I could run.

Read on for that script.

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Wrapping Get-Credential in Powershell

Published 2022-08-26 by Kevin Feasel

Stuart Ainsworth writes a script:

Just a quick blog; am working on a script that requires credentials to run against a REST API, and a developer wanted to convert that script to use command-line parameters. I built this script (and quick test) to show that the command-line parameters create the same object as the Get-Credential object.

The one thing that has me on edge a little is that the password comes in as plaintext. I do understand that sometimes this is the best route, though I’d put the pressure on devs to make sure there isn’t a route in which plaintext passwords get encrypted before transmission, even in a local environment like this.

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Testing Powershell Scripts

Published 2022-08-19 by Kevin Feasel

David Wilson provides an introduction to Pester:

Most of you probably know that I’m a big fan of automated testing and especially testing during the development process. It significantly improves the design of the code by encouraging loose coupling and high cohesion. It also provides great documentation and increases the confidence of anyone who needs to change the code in the future (this includes future you)!

Testing does tend to get the short end of the stick when it comes to development time. Some of that is design problems, like David mentions, but I think a lot of it is the “This is a solved problem” mentality we (and I am definitely part of “we” here) end up in: I proved that the solution work because the code compiled and the two scenarios I tried out worked; therefore, why do I need to “waste” the extra time by writing all of these tests when I can move on to something more interesting?

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