Why Adolib (and POSH_Ado)?

I’ve realized that in my explanations of Adolib and POSH_Ado, I left something important out. Why in the world am I spending all of this time and effort writing database access modules when there are already tools out there (SQLPS, for instance) which work.

The simple answer is SQLPS is not good enough for several reasons.

First, SQLPS is part of the SQL Server install, which is a big download. That’s quite a burden to place on a user just to get access to Invoke-SQLCmd.

Second, when I started writing Adolib (and the predecessor which is used at my company), SQLPS was still a snap-in rather than a module. This was in PowerShell 1.0 days, so it was the normal distribution method, but snap-ins were not fun to work with and that made SQLPS even more of a burden.

Third, although Invoke-SQLCmd has a lot of flexibility, it does not allow you to re-use the same connection for multiple commands. You connect (and authenticate) each time you want to run a SQL command. This seems wasteful to me.

Fourth, Invoke-SQLCmd uses strings for variable substitution rather than real parameters, so it’s vulnerable to SQL injection. While the other problems in this list can be overlooked, I have a harder time with this one. I realize that Invoke-SQLCmd is modeled to work like the command-line SQL tools, and that explains the string subsitution, there’s no good reason not to also support T-SQL parameters in statements.

Finally, the code in Adolib (and to some extent POSH_Ado) is pretty simple. It’s a good, easy to understand example of using .NET classes in PowerShell code. A friend at work who saw Adolib for the first time (reading this post) said that it seemed too easy. Adolib is very easy to use and easy enough to understand that you might find yourself adding features.

I work with SQL Server a lot, and most of the modules I use at work involve reading and or writing values to SQL. Adolib doesn’t have all of the flexibility that SQLPS gives, but it does use parameters and allows connection re-use. It’s been with me for a long time (8 years?) and the more I use it the more I can’t imagine using anything else.

POSH_Ado is a natural progression from Adolib. If you need to work with multiple database platforms, it’s really nice to have a consistent interface to work with them all. The times I’ve needed this kind of functionality POSH_Ado has been very handy and saved a lot of time.

Have you used Adolib or POSH_Ado? Anything you think needs to be added or changed with either?

I look forward to hearing your opinions.

–Mike