Joe Brinkman (ASP.Net MVP)

PowerShell and SubSonic

joe.brinkman@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 23:42:33 GMT

PowerShell is the perfect tool for wrapping complex command-line tools. By simplifying the API and using the built in Tab expansion capability, PowerShell makes even the most cumbersome commands usable without giving up any of their power. In this example we'll look at how I converted a batch file for SubSonic to a PowerShell script.

Creating a management dashboard with PowerGadgets and PowerShell

joe.brinkman@dotnetnuke.com — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 23:30:51 GMT

Several months ago I stumbled upon PowerGadgets and have been finding more and more uses for it ever since. I was initially intrigued by the ability to run powershell scripts but didn't have any immediate needs that required that much power. One of the strengths of PowerGadgets is the ability to run database queries and then to present the data using very slick graphs, guages and maps.

Why not just use Add-Member

joe.brinkman@dotnetnuke.com — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:13:58 GMT

In my last post Getting a Username/Password in PowerShell (cross posted to PowerShellCommunity.org), I was asked why not just use the Add-Member cmdlet. Having been doing software development for my entire adult life, this is not the first time this question has come up. Ok. Maybe not those exact words, but something very similar - why use code X when code Y does the same thing. Where I come from there is really only one response to this - look at both code alternatives and determine which one is the most efficient at doing the job without also becoming a maintenance problem. So lets take a peek under the hood a bit so we can see why I chose PSObject.Members.Add over using the Add-Member cmdlet.

Getting a Username/Password in PowerShell

joe.brinkman@dotnetnuke.com — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:12:40 GMT

As part of getting ready for my PowerShell session at OpenForce '07, I am creating a set of helper functions for working with SMO to manipulate and query the database server. A common need when working with the database is to pass the username and password to various SMO methods. When I first started coding my examples, I just passed a username and password as parameters into my functions. This works, but does not exactly look professional when you are sitting in a presentation and typing out passwords in plaintext.