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Category: Powershell

Migrating To Azure SQL Database

Published 2016-09-16 by Kevin Feasel

Mike Fal discusses BACPACs, DACPACs, and migrating on-prem databases to Azure SQL Database:

SQL Server Data Tools(SSDT) have always had a process to extract your database. There are two types of extracts you can perform:

  • DACPAC – A binary file that contains the logical database schema and possibly the data. This file retains the platform version of the database (i.e. 2012, 2014, 2016).

  • BACPAC – A binary file that contains the logical database schema and the data as insert statements. This stores the platform version, but is not locked into it.

Mike also walks through SqlPackage.exe.

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Create An Azure SQL Database Instance From Powershell

Published 2016-09-15 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal walks through the steps of setting up an Azure SQL Database instance and database using Powershell:

What I have done here is hard-code three parameters ( database edition, start IP address and end IP address) which for my situation won’t change but I have given the ability to pass in the environment name, SQL Server name and database name.

So a prompt will be presented to the user – here you should enter the relevant details and click enter.

It’s not that difficult to do, and the scripts themselves are probably faster than fumbling around the UI.

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Administrative Scripts

Published 2016-09-13 by Kevin Feasel

Slava Murygin has ten Powershell scripts to help administer a SQL Server instance:

Script #5. Read SQL Server Error Log file.

That is extremely important troubleshooting script. When you start/restart the SQL Server service and it does not come up, you can run this script to see what was going on during the SQL Server startup and what was the problem (just note that value of “$SQLInstancePath” must be pre-set by previous script):

Click through for all of the scripts.

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SQL Agent Job Durations As TimeSpans

Published 2016-09-13 by Kevin Feasel

Rob Sewell shows us how to convert the SQL Agent job duration into a .NET TimeSpan using Powershell:

The first job took 15 hours 41 minutes  53 seconds, the second 1 minute 25 seconds, the third 21 seconds. This makes it quite tricky to calculate the duration in a suitable datatype. In T-SQL people use scripts like the following from MSSQLTips.com

((run_duration/10000*3600 + (run_duration/100)%100*60 + run_duration%100 + 31 ) / 60)  as ‘RunDurationMinutes’

I wish that some version of SQL Server would fix this “clever” duration.  We’ve had the time datatype since 2008; at least add a new column with run duration as a time value if you’re that concerned with backwards compatibility.

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Powershell Text Splitting

Published 2016-09-12 by Kevin Feasel

Thomas Rushton shows how to split delimited text using Powershell:

Not very readable. At least, I can’t read it easily, so I need to split that into something a bit friendlier, like an actual list, one line per item. Fortunately, PowerShell has a split command that should do the job, as per this post ScriptingGuy’s Split Method in PowerShell.

Split() is just a .NET string method; you can use any overloads of that method in Powershell just like you could in C# or F#.

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Finding Your SQL Server License Key

Published 2016-09-12 by Kevin Feasel

Richie Lee reproduces a Powershell script to get the license key used for installing SQL Server:

Copied from somewhere else on the internet, this PowerShell script will return the product key used for a SQL instance Install. Super useful when changing licenses on temporary VM’s I spin up and play around with to SQL Developer whose instances have passed the Enterprise evaluation use-by date. Putting this here for my own benefit. I claim no kudos!

Click through for the code.

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Powershell Failing On Error

Published 2016-09-12 by Kevin Feasel

Michael Bourgon has a helpful tip for those CmdExec SQL Agent jobs which run Powershell scripts which won’t fail on error:

However, when run via SQL Agent, it succeeds.  GAH!
I tried 50 different variations; modifying the script, various TRY..CATCH blocks found on the internet.  Nothing.  Every single one of them succeeded.

Then I remembered that by default, even though it had an error, by default errors always continue.  ($ErrorActionPreference=”Continue”.  So I added this line at the top:

Read on for the answer.

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Collecting Registry Data

Published 2016-09-09 by Kevin Feasel

Slava Murygin shows how to use Powershell to read the Registry:

Do you use third party tools to document state of your SQL Server?
If not, that script is for you!

At first, you will know what is your SQL Server is up to.
At second, that might be your baseline document, to which you can compare a current SQL Server state over the time.
At third, that is a priceless piece of documentation!!! (I mean FREE!!!) which you can put in a folder and report to your boss.

Registry settings are a good part of a baseline, particularly a security baseline.

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Looking For SQL Saturday Sessions

Published 2016-09-08 by Kevin Feasel

Wayne Sheffield has a Powershell cmdlet to find sessions matching SQL Saturday topics:

The output to the screen is the Event #, Speaker, Session Title and URL for the presentation.

The generated export file will also include the event name and session abstract. Additionally, the URL will be encased with the Excel HYPERLINK() function. When the export file is opened up with Excel, clicking the URL will open your browser to the session information, where the presentation material can be downloaded.

I hope that you get a lot of use out of this script.

Click through for the script and more details.

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Powershell Prompts

Published 2016-09-07 by Kevin Feasel

Thomas Rushton wants to customize his Powershell prompt:

By default, your PowerShell prompt is “PS <<path>> >”. So normal; so dull. However, that can be easily changed. In my case, I want to add:

  • the current time (well, the time at which the prompt was generated)
  • a reminder which account I’m using (I have two – a “normal user” one, and a “DBA/SU” one
  • a countdown of seconds remaining until my next holiday

Oh, and I still need to see the current path.

Very interesting.  By contrast, here’s how to change a Bash prompt.

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