A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
The first hurdle I encountered was the fact that there was already an older version installed. After some fiddling, trying to uninstall the old modules and going through the fixed described below, I figured the documentation was probably the best start, and it was. 🙂
Nicky documents several issues but was ultimately able to pull it in.
Comments closedPatrick Gruenauer show off a pair of new operators in Powershell 7:
With PowerShell 7 new operators were introduced. We call them chain operators. Chain operators enables you to do something after doing something. They use the $? and $LASTEXITCODE variable to determine whether a command on the left hand of the pipe failed or succeded.
Let’s cover this topic by demonstrating some examples to fully understand the new pipeline technology.
This is definitely Bash-inspired and I’m happy they made this move.
Comments closedSo I figured I’d take a look and see what was happening and how we could fix it. Now I’m going to be honest with you, my usual method of debugging involves adding
Write-Host 'Hi‘, or piping objects toOut-GridView. I did start down this route, but theGet-DbaRegServerfunction calls an internal function, and things quickly got complicated.Luckily, the PowerShell extension for VSCode includes a debugger so we can level up our game and use that to track down our issues.
Click through to see how it works.
Comments closedStuart Moore introduces dbaSecurityScan:
How easy it to audit them? If someone asks you the DBA exactly who has access to object A, can you tell them? How do people get access to that object, is it via a role, a schema or an explicit permission?
Is that information in an easy to read or manipulate manner?
How do you ensure that permissions persist between upgrades? I’ve certainly seen 3rd party upgrades that have reset database level permissions. Do you have a mechanism to check every permission and put them back as they were?
We’re all doing the devops these days. Our database schema is source controlled, and we’re deploying it incrementally in pipelines and testing it. But are we doing that with our database security?
So in the classic open source way, I decided to scratch my own itch by writing something. That something is dbaSecurityScan, a PowerShell module that aims to offer a solution for all of the above.
Click through to see what dbaSecurityScan covers today, how to call it, and what you can do to get more info.
Comments closedMark Broadbent solves a problem for us:
I have been experiencing a problem for quite a while now in my current environment, in that some of our old builds cannot be deleted. When you attempt to do so it results in the following error:
One or more builds associated with the requested pipeline(s) are retained by a release. The pipeline(s) and builds will not be deleted.Many of our pipelines have undergone a lot of change over time to the degree it is not even obvious anymore why (or indeed where) these builds are being prevented from being dropped. The only thing that is clear is that until they can be, the old build definitions will remain.
Regardless of the reason why, Mark has the answer for how.
Comments closedMax Trinidad gives us a primer on SMO with Powershell 7:
There are two ways you could use SMO in PowerShell 7 (cross-platform):
1. Installing the SMO NuGet packages, two packages are requiered:
a. Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlManagementObjects Version 150.18208.0 (as of 03/23/2020)
b. Microsoft.Data.SqlClient Version 1.1.1 (recommended)2. Installing the PowerShell Module: SqlServer Version 21.1.18221 (as of 03/23/2020)
Keep in mind, once the packages and/or modules are installed, you need to update them manually.
Read the whole thing.
Comments closedPatrick Gruenauer shows how to make your Powershell functions pipeline-capable:
You probably have already created your first function in PowerShell and now you want that your function is capable of pipeline input. Right? Ok, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog post I will carry out creating a sample function that accepts pipeline input by value.
Patrick also shows us one of the earlier hang-ups of pipeline development if you don’t have the correct process blocks.
Comments closedJeffrey Hicks takes us through some of the tricky parts of migrating to Powershell 7:
A long established community best practice in PowerShell scripting is not using command and parameter aliases. In a cross-platform world, this is even more critical. You may have been in the habit of using Sort in your code in place of Sort-Object. I know I have. I didn’t mind bending the no alias rule abit because there was nothing cryptic about Sort.
But in the Linux world, sort is a native command. There is no PowerShell alias. If your code uses sort, on Linux it will call the native command which will most likely break your code.
Read on for several more hints.
Comments closedJess Pomfret has some advice for you if you ever give a presentation:
If you don’t know what Pester is, it’s a test framework for PowerShell. In the simplest explanation, using their Domain-Specific Language (DSL) you describe how things should look. If all looks good it returns output in green and if it doesn’t you get red output. There are a lot of great use cases for Pester, like using it to ensure your code does what it’s supposed to, using it to validate your SQL Server environment (dbachecks), or in this example using it to make sure your demos are setup and ready to go.
When I’m preparing for a presentation I go through the demos over and over again, so it’s easy to accidentally leave things in a state that will cause issues when I go to do my demos in the presentation. If you’re creating a table, for example, during the demo and you already created it practicing and then forgot to drop it, the demo gods will strike and it’ll fail when it matters most! A simple Pester test to check whether the table exists will solve this issue.
Even if you aren’t giving talks in public (or inside your company), Pester is a useful tool for ensuring that the thing you expect to be the case actually is the case.
Comments closedFinally is here, PowerShell 7 GA (Generally Available) is available for download for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Go and get it!
And Max is here to show us exactly how to get it.
Comments closed