database-tools

The new PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor features a snippet menu that lets you easily insert predefined code snippets. Simply press CTRL+J to open the...

Whenever you need to assign multi-line text to a variable, you can use so-called here-string. This is a sample: $myCodeSnippet=@' function...

PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor creates collapsible regions automatically, so you can collapse a function body or an IF statement. In addition, you can...

Sometimes you may just be interested in the last couple of entries in a log file. Here’s a simple yet fast way of outputting only the last x...

In a previous tip we illustrated how you can use web services to retrieve information such as public holidays or the location of an IP address....

Whenever a machine is connected to the Internet, it gets a public IP address (typically assigned by the ISP), and this public IP address is not...

In PowerShell 3.0, WPF is a great (and easy) way of creating GUIs. If you have a touch-enabled machine, check out how easily you can open a drawing...

Whenever you change a file, the file system automatically updates the LastWriteTime property. If you'd like to change a file without leaving...

Ed Wilson from the Scripting Guys demonstrated how PowerShell can use free web services to find out holidays. You do need direct (non-proxy)...

Aliases are shortcuts for commands and useful in interactive PowerShell. Once you write scripts, however, you should no longer use aliases and...

Ever wondered how a website knew which country you are from? That's because there are IP address segments assigned to certain regions. And...

Get-Process can easily return the CPU load for each running process, but this information by itself is not very useful: Get-Process | Select-Object...

PowerShell 3.0 uses .NET Framework 4.x so it has WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) capabilities built-in. This way, it only takes a few lines of...

Often, when you start writing a PowerShell script, you use temporary (dirty) variable names that later you'd like to polish. Renaming script...

ISE 3.0 features automatic outlining, so structures like braces can be collapsed or expanded by clicking the small "+" or "-"...

PowerShell can automatically find and list all variables that you use in a script. This way, you can easily create variable documentation for your...

A lot of products come with their own PowerShell consoles. There are special PowerShell consoles for Exchange, for SQL Server, for Active Directory,...

ISE has a simple yet effective debugger built-in that you can use to step through your code. The debugger does require that you save your script...

In ISE 3.0, you can easily switch focus between the interactive console pane and the editor script pane by pressing CTRL+D (to go to the console)...

Sometimes, in larger PowerShell scripts it is hard to find the corresponding opening or closing bracket or brace. One thing you can do, of course,...

Thanks to MVP Shay Levy from http://powershellmagazine.com fame, here's a quick way of dumping all ISE 3.0 keyboard shortcuts; a lot of them are...

If you think you understand PowerShell parameter binding, then have a look at this simple function which exposes a little-known PowerShell behavior:...

  If you need to know the object nature of command results, you probably know that you can pipe them to Get-Member like this: Get-Process |...