database-tools

Discarding Results

All PowerShell Versions Since PowerShell returns anything that commands leave behind, it is particularly important in PowerShell scripts to discard...

Optional and Mandatory at the Same Time

All PowerShell Versions Can parameters be optional and mandatory at the same time? They can, based on context. A parameter can be mandatory when...

Server Change Over

I am looking to upgrade my up.time server from a virtual Windows Server 2008 R2 running mysql to a physical Windows Server 2012 R2 running sql...

Important Math Functions

All PowerShell Versions Here are the four most important Math functions needed by administration scripts: [Math]::Floor(4.9) [Math]::Ceiling(3.2)...

Finding Minimum and Maximum Values

All PowerShell Versions To find the smallest and largest item in a range of numbers, use Measure-Object: $list = 1,4,3,1,3,12,990 $result = $list |...

Upgrade Errors with 8.5

Hi, I’m new to SQLdm. I’ve been tasked to upgrade from 8.01 to 8.5. During the upgrade process I get an error stating that it...

Combining Results

All PowerShell Versions Let's assume you want to identify suspicious service states like services that are stopped although their start mode is...

Countdown Hours

All PowerShell Versions Whether it is a birthday or an important game, you may want PowerShell to tell you just how many hours it is till the event...

Playing WAV Sounds

PowerShell 3.0 or later To play a WAV sound file in a background process, PowerShell can use the built-in SoundPlayer class. It accepts a path to a...

System Uptime

All PowerShell Versions Windows starts a high definition counter each time it boots, and this counter will return the milliseconds the system runs:...

Finding Attached USB Sticks

All PowerShell Versions If you'd like to know whether there are currently USB storage devices attached to your computer, WMI can help:...

Metadata Overview, by Ron Huizenga

What is Metadata? The term “Metadata” arises frequently when discussing Data Architecture.  In short, it is “data about data.”  However,...

Test Service Responsiveness

All PowerShell Versions To test whether a particular service is still responding, use a clever trick. First, ask WMI for the service you want to...

WMI Device Inventory

All PowerShell Versions The WMI service can report plenty of details about the computer hardware. Typically, each type of hardware is represented by...

Get Sleep and Hibernation Times

All PowerShell Versions If you want to find out whether a computer is frequently put into sleep or hibernation mode, here is a function that reads...

Monitoring Disk Queue Length

Recently, I wrote a blog post about performance counters and why the threshold depends (Performance Counters: Why It Depends). In this post, I...

Understanding Sequential Filtering

All PowerShell Versions When you parse text-based log files, or need to filter other types of information, you typically use Where-Object. Here are...

Filtering Hotfix Information

All PowerShell Versions Get-HotFix is a built-in cmdlet that returns the installed hotfixes. It has no parameter to filter on hotfix ID, though....

Getting Shutdown Information

All PowerShell Versions Windows logs all shutdown events in its System event log. From there, you can extract and analyze the information. Here is a...

Copying Command History…

All PowerShell Versions If you played with PowerShell and suddenly realize that you would actually like to keep the commands you played with, try...

Correcting ISE Encoding

All PowerShell versions When you run a console application inside the ISE editor, non-standard characters such as “ä” or...