We have seen issues reported in our support forum where Azure commands are not terminating, or more likely their cmdlets are not returning in a GUI environment. This is due to the Powershell pipeline being held up by the GUI, which could prevent Powershell from processing internal messages and events thus causing a hang when a […]
Tag: automation
Automation — in Science
I recently had the great honor of attending my eldest son’s Ph.D. thesis defense. It was one of those mommy moments — you know, “my son the doctor.” Jackson Cahn, Ph.D. with his parents, June Blender and Andy Cahn Photo by Ron Rogers Although I’d discussed my son’s work with him for years, I didn’t […]
February PowerShell One-Liner
If you subscribe to the SAPIEN newsletter you should have seen this already. If not, why don’t you take a moment to subscribe? Each month you’ll get all the latest product and training news from SAPIEN Technologies as well as useful tips like this Powershell one-liner that produces a report on event log sizes for multiple computers.
Where do I begin?
“I’m new to scripting and need a book recommendation.” “Should I learn VBScript or PowerShell?” “What are some good books for learning scripting?”
These are natural and common questions. A few years ago the answers would have been simple. But today if you are just getting started with administrative scripting, the answers only bring more questions. The real question isn’t what book should you read but what technology should you learn? If you are a a SAPIEN blog reader I’m going to assume that the choice comes down to VBScript or PowerShell. The quick answer is to learn both, but I realize that’s not practical. So let’s look at this a bit further and realize that some of this will change once PowerShell v2.0 is released as part of Windows 7 and depending on your adoption of Windows 7.
Your Vote and Comments count
I like seeing all the votes for our short PowerShell production poll. Over 100 responses and still overwhelmingly more of you are using PowerShell in production. If you aren’t, I hope you’ll vote and leave a comment why on the original post so that the discussion will be in one location.
Techmentor NYC Wrap Up
Sorry you didn’t make it to the Big Apple for the last Techmentor conference. It was a small and intimate show which I always like because it is easier to talk with attendees and answer questions. Plus your odds are increased for all the freebies, include free books!
Here’s a taste of what you missed.
Get-OtherDate
PowerShell’s [DATETIME] object has some handy methods for calculating a date such as AddDays(). Let me show you how as well as my own function for those situations where PowerShell’s methods just aren’t enough.
Proofing the Proof
I just got the proof from the printer for Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell: TFM. It always exciting to hold a finished (or close to finished) book. As soon as we check the proof and give the ok to the printer, books will be available. We’re trying to get this turned around as soon […]
Powershell vs T-SQL
If you’ve been debating the pros and cons of PowerShell vs T-SQL, or trying to decide why anyone would want to use PowerShelll to manage SQL server when it already has a great management language, take a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/dtjones/archive/2008/08/29/powershell-vs-t-sql-or-why-did-we-add-powershell-support-in-sql2k8.aspx. Good stuff. Clear and to the point.
More fun with Microsoft Word and PowerShell
I needed a demonstration for one of my last online PowerShell classes on using COM objects in PowerShell. I took an old VBScript that used Microsoft Word to get document statistics such as word and page count and transformed it into PowerShell. I quickly realized I could flesh out the demo into a larger function that I can actually use. Given that I generate a lot of Word docs, being able to get some document statistics is helpful. So I created a function called Get-DocStatistic.
