Category: Powershell

Chrissy LeMaire has an update on SQLPS and SQL Server Linux:

• Microsoft is investigating options for a cross-platform lightweight SQL Management Studio GUI tool for Linux.

• Microsoft is investigating open sourcing the SQL Server PowerShell provider and cmdlets, and that it “makes a lot of sense” and “aligns with what Microsoft has already done with our Azure PowerShell cmdlets on github.” This is being tracked by connect item 2442788.

• Microsoft doesn’t have dates or more details to share for any of these items at this time and will keep the community updated on their progress as they continue to evaluate our plans based on customer feedback

I’m most interested in the first of these points, but this is all interesting news.  Also check out her guest appearance on the PowerScripting Podcast.

Mike Fal wants to automate loading multiple CSV files:

Once the staging table is in place, the load is actually fairly simple. You have lots of options, but the easiest one for my money is to build a BCP call and execute that. BCP is a simple utility that has been around for a while, mostly because it is effective. The build is not difficult:

It’s quick, dirty, and functional.

Chrissy LeMaire wants Microsoft to fix three things with SQLPS:

SQLPS has a lot of of bugs that need to be addressed (I’ll get to that soon), but I propose we start with these three.

1. SQLPS module is slow to load
2. Loading SQLPS module changes current directory to PS SQLSERVER:\>
3. SQLPS module uses unapproved PowerShell verbs

Each item even has suggested fixes. The fixes are pretty straightforward (said the DBA who doesn’t do QA). Bugs 1 and 2 suggest modifying a few lines in SqlPsPostScript.ps1, while number 3 probably requires a recompile and we’re not really sure how challenging that will be.

Please upvote the Connect items if you use SQLPS…or don’t but would if it worked better.

Steve Jones warns us away from Write-Host in Powershell:

I’ve written a few scripts and programs lately, mostly just for fun. In those scripts, I’ve used Write-Host to return output. To me, it’s been like “Print” in various languages where I can get output of a program. Often I’ll use a method/function to get info and then use print to output that to the caller.

However a few people noted that in my last script, Write-host wasn’t necessary. When I asked why, both Mike Fal and Drew Furgiule responded.

Mike and Drew are smart cookies.  Write-Host has some major limitations which hinder developers’ abilities to modularize and package viable code.

Richie Lee shows off Get-TimeSpan and New-TimeSpan:

As is the case with most things, when I find a way for getting something done in a script that is “good enough”, I’ll tend to stick with that method until that method no longer becomes fit for purpose. One such method is printing out the time that something took in PowerShell: many of the scripts on my site use this method to get the duration of a task, and I’ve been using this since PowerShell 1.0

This is certainly an improvement over the old version.

Mike Fal shows us how to get database file information using Powershell:

To do this, I dove into the SMO object model. This gets a little /Net-y, but the good news is there’s lots of properties we can use to get the information we are looking for. If we look at both the DataFile and LogFile classes, there are properties readily available for us. Both classes have UsedSpace and Size properties (both measured in KB), from which we can derive both available space and percentage used. All it takes is wrapping some collection and formatting logic around these objects and we’re good to go. You can see my full function up on GitHub.

This is a nice example of using the Powershell pipeline to build an end product, in this case an HMTL report of log and file usage.

Cody Konior shows how to use GetDefaultInitFields in SMO to improve performance, and also explains a bug when you try to do this:

It turns out has no default properties set, and the exception seems to occur after you try to set some. Interestingly though the way that boolean flag works is to set default properties on each SMO type; which means the solution is to turn it on for everything and then only disable it for this specific type; retaining any of the performance improvements throughout the rest of SMO.

Anything that makes SMO faster gets a vote of approval from me.