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Category: Powershell

New Powershell Cmdlets

Published 2016-07-06 by Kevin Feasel

Chrissy LeMaire talks about the 25 new cmdlets in SQL Server’s Powershell module:

One of the best things about these cmdlets is that it makes failed jobs a whole lot easier to find. Note that SQL Server Management Studio 2016 does not have to be installed on the server — only your workstation. That’s because the cmdlet is built on top of SMO which is available in all versions of SQL Server since 2000.

As an aside, you may be wondering what a cmdlet is, and what’s the difference between a cmdlet and what you and I write. A cmdlet is a formally written PowerShell command that’s written in C#. I’ve never written one in my life. Instead, I write Functions. They’re both essentially the same, but a cmdlet is fancier on the back end.

Powershell is the present (not the future) for administration, so it’s nice to see the SQL Server team pushing themselves a bit when it comes to cmdlets.  They’ve a long way to go, but this is a nice step.

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Kill Remote Processes

Published 2016-07-01 by Kevin Feasel

Michael Bourgon has a Powershell script to kill remote processes:

Simple problem: we had to replace the config files for an app that hits the database, pointing it at a CNAME.

However, the file could be in use because the app was running.  And the app only loads the file on startup.  So we came up with this, which worked quite well.  Note that we use WMI (see my other posts on it!) to grab the application info then a WMI method to terminate the app.

Click through for the script.

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New Powershell Cmdlets

Published 2016-07-01 by Kevin Feasel

Rob Sewell looks into some new Powershell cmdlets for SQL Server management:

Chrissy LeMaire has written about the new SQL Agent cmdlets

Aaron Nelson has written about the new Get-SqlErrorLog cmdlet

Laerte Junior has written about Invoke-SQLCmd

All four of us will be presenting a webinar on the new CMDlets via thePowerShell Virtual Chapter Wed, Jul 06 2016 12:00 Eastern Daylight Time If you cant make it a recording will be made available on YouTube on the VC Channel https://sqlps.io/video

There are 17 new Always Encrypted cmdlets and 25 new cmdlets in total.

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Generating Bulk Import Files

Published 2016-06-10 by Kevin Feasel

Cody Konior shows us how to create a SQL Server bulk insert format file using Powershell:

Don’t forget there are a few minor security considerations:

  • Your login needs Administer Bulk Operations permission.
  • Your AD account needs access to the file (and possibly delegation enabled for remote shares)
  • Or if using an SQL login the database engine service account needs access to the file.

Anyway now that we have the data in table format without worrying about ordering or duplicate column names, we can much more easily manipulate it and store it into the database.

I remember creating a couple of these by hand, and that was no fun.  I never created enough to get the hang of the syntax or to want to automate the process, but at least I know where to look if I ever have to do this again.

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Pester For Configuration Checks

Published 2016-05-26 by Kevin Feasel

Rob Sewell talks about SQL Server configuration testing using Pester, a Powershell test framework:

Occasionally, for reasons I haven’t explored I had to test against the value property of the returned object

          It "The Full User Database Backup should be scheduled Weekly $OlaUserFullSchedule" {
$Return.OlaUserFullSchedule.value | Should Be $OlaUserFullSchedule
}

I wanted to be able to run the tests against environments or groups of servers with different default values so I parameterised the Test Results as well and then the logical step was to turn it into a function and then I could do some parameter splatting. This also gives me the opportunity to show all of the things that I am currently giving parameters to the test for

This is a nice walkthrough of Rob’s contribution, available on GitHub.

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Powershell ETL, Part 2

Published 2016-05-24 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad has part 2 of his Powershell ETL series:

If you notice, in the above cmdlet the where-clause I’m selecting to use the Column1 property instead of a reasonable label. In my scenario the data in the CSV file contain variable columns fopr its different data types such as: Info, Error, and System. So, it was easy to identify the total number of columns to be 15 columns.

Now, using the cmdlet “Import-Csv” using the parameter “-Header”, you can define a list columns when you build the $Logdata object. We create the $header variable with the column-names separated by comma.

Keep an eye out for part 3.  In the meantime, check out part 1 if you haven’t already.

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BACPACs In Azure

Published 2016-05-20 by Kevin Feasel

Mike Fal uses Powershell to import and export Azure SQL Database data:

What makes this black voodoo magic work? Is this some proprietary technique Microsoft has snuck in on us? Surprisingly, this is a bit of technology that have existed for sometime now as part of SQL Server Data Tools called BACPACs. A BACPAC is essentially a logical backup of a database, storing the schema and data as SQL statements.

This differs from a typical SQL Server backup, which stores your database pages directly in a binary format. Because of this, native backups are smaller and can be made/restored faster. However, they are more rigid, as you can only restore a native backup in specific scenarios. A logical backup, since it is a series of SQL statements, can be more flexible.

Mike’s going to follow up with a way to take advantage of this to migrate normal SQL Server databases, so that should be interesting as well.

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Dave Mason Interviews Chrissy LeMaire

Published 2016-05-19 by Kevin Feasel

Dave Mason recently interviewed Chrissy LeMaire on topics Powershell:

[Dave]: It’s natural to have bias toward the tools and technology we know, which can lead to spirited debate. Most of the time, it’s friendly and thoughtful. I’ve been getting a sense of “us and them” regarding T-SQL vs PowerShell. Do you get that sense too?

[Chrissy]: Yes, which has been pretty surprising to me. As a PowerShell MVP, it sometimes feels like fellow DBAs may see me as an invader of SQL territory, when in fact, I’ve been a DBA for 17 of the 20 years that I’ve been in IT. I even updated my Twitter profile to make it clear that I’ve been a SQL Server DBA since 1999. I believe this issue will resolve itself as DBAs begin to see how PowerShell can make their jobs way easier. I’m also hoping that mySQL Server Migration script, which has no T-SQL (or even C#) equivalent, will be as persuasive as it is useful.

I remember reading an article in SQL Server Magazine back around 2002 that made the case for DBAs to learn T-SQL and other scripting languages. My first thought was “Wait, there are DBAs that don’t know T-SQL?” I always thought T-SQL was part of the job description, and it’s the same now with PowerShell. This belief was further enforced by the fact that when I was getting started with PowerShell and SQL, Simple Talk’s Phil Factor and Laerte Junior already had a ton of stuff out there and a few books about SQL Server and PowerShell had already been written. I thought I was late to the party.

This is a fun read; check it out.

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Creating An ETL Process In Powershell

Published 2016-05-17 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad is building a Powershell-based solution for ETL from scratch:

So after the drive gets mapped to T: drive, we need to look and collect the type of logs we want to pull. In my scenario, I’m looking for all log labeled “*.Events.*.log.*”. One caveat discovered previously, these text logs file doesn’t contains servername information. But, No Problem! This is another opportunity to be creative with PowerShell.

Here we use the Cmdlet “Get-ChildItem” with the “Sort-Object” to sort the results by its object property “LastWriteTime“. You will file this property very useful later as you progress in our data collection process. This results set wil need to be stored in PowerShell Object

I’m interested in seeing where this goes, especially because my first choice for ETL would be SSIS with Biml.

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