I’ve been playing around with Visio and PowerShell for quite a while now and the experience is something of a mixed bag. My first thought was to use PowerShell to build integration diagrams, reading server names, domains, VLANs, and datacenter locations from a database, and adding color-coded connections to show the network connection requirements (e.g. …
Continue reading ‘PowerShell and Visio Part 1 – Introduction’ »
I had a thought today that it would be interesting to write a function to copy properties from one object to another. Specifically I was thinking about doing a join operation on two arrays and that it would be good to be able to say “copy these properties from the object on the right to …
This is a real quick one. In PowerShell, the “native” way to express a two-state variable is with Switch parameters. For instance: When calling Test-Thing, you can either supply -Recurse or leave it off. It’s a flag. This is PowerShell 101. Programmers coming from other languages are used to Boolean variables. Sometimes, one slips through …
Continue reading ‘PowerShell Code Smells: Boolean Parameters’ »
If you’ve been using PowerShell for any amount of time you’ve probably written a lot of code. Here are some guidelines I’ve come up with for what I consider “Professional” code. I should note that I’m assuming some basic things like correct verb-noun naming, commented code, reasonable variable names, etc. Also, the code should work! …
Continue reading ‘7 Ingredients of Professional PowerShell Code’ »
Sometimes I feel like I know a lot about PowerShell. I’ve taught dozens of classes on PowerShell, written two books, and used it for 8 years now. And then I stumble upon this post from Jeffery Snover in 2006.xI’m not even sure now why I was looking at it at the end of 2015. The …
About five years ago I gave a presentation to a boys group about the rate of change in computer hardware. I compared my first computer (a Commodore 64) and a laptop which I had just bought (a decent Asus laptop). The comparison was humorous. The almost thirty year old computer was several orders of magnitude …
Since I didn’t do a great job realizing my goals from last year, I thought putting a little more “effort” into defining them this year might make a difference. 100 Posts. I know I didn’t even get close to 50 last year, but I think I might have just not set a “stretch” goal. I …
I mentioned here that Invoke-SQLCmd (included in the SQLPS module for SQL Server) was susceptible to SQL-Injection attacks, but I haven’t demonstrated that or ever seen anyone show it. To do so, I’ll start with code out of the help for Invoke-SQLCmd. Here’s the code (taken from here) Notice that the parameters are encoded in a …
I recently stumbled upon a bit of code (not important where) that had a line that looked like this: When I saw it, I immediately thought “they’re using the -Contains operator instead of the -Like operator or the .Contains() method.” This is a common mistake, so my radar picks it up without me even thinking …
One thing I’ve always been impressed about with PowerShell is the vibrant community. In this post, I will outline several ways to get involved in the PowerShell community, starting with some really easy ones. Starting Small You don’t have to be an expert to be part of the community, in fact if you’re reading this, …
