Technical How-To's
I just sent the following email to the BCL (Base Class Library) Team Blog email address in hopes of getting some insight into a weird problem we've been having. I was hoping you could give me some general guidance on how Type.GetProperties() determines the sequence of the PropertyInfo objects it returns. I just ran across this remark on MSDN about the order that Type.GetProperties() returns PropertyInfo objects The GetProperties method does not return properties in a particular order, such as alphabetical...
I've read and listened to Scott Hanselman sing the praises of SlickRun for a long time, but I just recently got around to using it. For those of you who are as slow to catch on as me, it is essentially just a tricked-out version of the Run window that allows you launch programs much faster than you can through the traditional hide-and-seek start menu approach. This is especially true if you are a tool addict and have a start menu that stretches across your screen. Best of all, it is FREE, which is...
I knew that SQL Server 2005 had structured exception handling, but for some reason I assumed that you could only use it within CLR sprocs. Since I still haven't actually heard of anyone using CLR sprocs for anything other than demos or sample projects (at least not without being pummeled by hoards of angry DBA's), I mostly ignored this new feature until now. Today I worked on a sproc that involved over a dozen DML statements (it was a utility sproc to handle security and setup steps for developers...
When given a choice between style and substance in software, I usually opt for what I consider to be substantive qualities such as speed, functionality, usability, and cost. Since I never saw a sentence about Vista without the phrase "eye candy", I casually dismissed Microsoft's long-awaited OS release as fluff when it first came out and was in no hurry to jump aboard the upgrade band-wagon. Well despite my valiant effort at indifference, I am ashamed to admit that I have finally succumbed to the...
One of my goals for the next six months was to contribute to an open source project and I think I've chosen one. I downloaded and installed the PowerShell Community Extensions (a.k.a. pscx) from codeplex a while ago, but I just now got around to really tinkering with the cmdLets and reviewing the source code and scripts. I have to say I'm impressed. Keith Hill and his team of volunteer developers did a first rate job of supplementing version one of Powershell with some really useful cmdlets. I can't...
Anything that can be done with ADO.NET is possible in PowerShell through a call to Assembly::Load and the New-Object cmdLet, but that doesn't mean that the resulting code will seem very shell-like or practical. Two approaches to database access that definitely do seem compelling to me, however, are the sample SQL Provider recently demoed by the PowerShell team and Dan Sullivan's PowerSMO script, which is really just a thin wrapper around the SQL Management Objects found in the Microsoft.SqlServer.Managem...
The more I work with powershell, the more I start seeing everything that lives on the computer as part of a giant database that I can query. When used in conjunction with the pipeline and get-member -type property to discover the available properties on an object, the where-object, sort-object, select-object, and group-object cmdlets can be strung together to answer some very sophisticated questions. We often seem to run out of space on our development sql servers, so one tedious question that I...
I'm doing some work now on an internal web application where I had to logon with an external test account before I could do anything. That got old fast, so I created a powershell script file to automatically launch IE, input the username and password, and click the submit button. I originally tried to do this with WatiN, which provides a much easier interface for controlling the browser than the COM object InternetExplorer.Application, but I couldn't get by the security exceptions explained in this...
Here is a good joke to play on one of your developer buddies if they have powershell and SQL Server installed on their local machines and you have sa rights on the SQL Server for whatever reason (former debugging help, open environment between developers, blank sa password, or mad hacker skills on your part). Wait until they are busy typing and execute the following query in Query Analyzer (or using sqlcmd.exe if you want to be a purist) against their SQL Server. You may want to lock down your own...
I've been impressed by the attention paid to discoverabiltiy in powershell, which has allowed me to quite a bit of learning without ever leaving the command line. Here are a few of my favorite features: Guessing - This may seem strange to list as the number one discoverability feature, but I think the Powershell design team did an excellent job of exposing functionality through well scoped cmdLets that are logically and consistently named. With cmd.exe, the majority of the heavy lifting is done by...
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