SQL Server 2008 and higher ship with the invoke-sqlcmd cmdlet while SQL Server 2005 and higher includes the sqlcmd.exe utility. Not wanting to take a dependency on invoke-sqlcmd, a few years ago I’d written a simpler variation I called invoke-sqlcmd2 which I’ve updated along with others.

You might think with… Read more

Before I delve into the subject of scripting SSIS package deployments, I’m going to take a slight detour and explain why the general subject of automating deployments is important.

Automating Deployments

One of the keys areas you should be looking at automation, possibly through scripting is deployments. If you’re doing… Read more

I’ve been involved in a project to set up a full test environment of dozens of SQL Servers. The requirements of the test environment where such that they needed to be cloned via V2V or P2V from source servers, the servers would then be renamed and located within a completely… Read more

The website PowershellCommunity.org is moving to a new site poweshell.org and I wasn’t sure the old forum posts will be brought over. Well, I kind like some of the answers I provided in the SQL Server forum and wanted to download them into a text file in case I ever… Read more

During September/October I’ll be presenting at several in-person events:

Tampa IT Pro Camp

Join system administrators and IT professionals for the Tampa IT Pro Camp on Saturday, September 22nd, 2012.

IT Pro Camps are focused on serving the needs of  IT Pro’s (Windows system administrators). This is will be… Read more

Presentation and scripts from my Storing PowerShell Output session at South Florida IT Pro Camp 2012.

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Presentation and scripts from my Integrating SQL Server PBM with SCOM session at Jacksonville IT Pro Camp 2012.

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Join system administrators and IT professionals for the Jacksonville IT Pro Camp on Saturday, June 16th, 2012.

IT Pro Camps are focused on serving the needs of  IT Pro’s (Windows system administrators). After having completed IT Pro Camps in Tampa, South Florida, Orlando, and Sarasota, the Jacksonville IT Pro… Read more

I saw a question in the forums related to inserting new rows into a SQL Server table only if they didn’t exist. The current solution was using an ADO.NET DataTable , checking for new rows and then pushing the rows back to SQL Server by calling the Update method on… Read more

I saw this question in one of forums on backing up i.e. scripting out a database object. The problem is easy to solve, but only if you’re familiar with SMO . Even so, there some more obscure aspects of SMO like URNs which not many people are aware of. If… Read more

I wanted show someone how to use table-valued parameters available in SQL Server 2008 and higher. The main use case of table-valued parameters is for sending a list or array of items as parameter to a SQL Server stored procedure or function. This is more efficient than parsing strings or… Read more

Several months ago I described a solution for Delegated SQL Server Administration with Powershell. In the solution, the SqlProxy module audits all security administration activity to a custom Windows Event log. In this blog post, I’ll described a process to transform and incrementally load the audit data into a… Read more

As part of troubleshooting Kerberos authentication for SQL Server I had to verify SPNs so I thought I’d blog about the process I went through. Sometimes I think a post blog is nothing more than public documentation of  a complex problem …

Get SQL Server SPNs from Active Directory

Before… Read more

A question came up in a class I was teaching:  “How do you share your Powershell profiles across accounts?”

Well, there’s documented way of sharing profiles on the same machine where you create an All Users profile. As stated in help about_Profiles Powershell will look in the following locations for… Read more

Join system administrators IT professionals and database professionals in addition to managers at all levels who work with Microsoft technologies for the Sarasota IT Pro Camp on Saturday, February 18th, 2012.

IT Pro Camps are focused on serving the needs of  IT Pro’s (Windows system administrators). IT Pro’s haven’t… Read more

Presentation and scripts from my Storing Powershell Output session at Orlando IT Pro Camp 2012.

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The Orlando IT Pro Camp marks our third event after Tampa and South Florida. As with the prior IT Pro Camps I’m helping put together the Orlando IT Pro Camp. Register to attend this free event on Saturday, January 21st. Orlando will be even bigger than Tampa or South… Read more

Ed Wilson (Blog|Twitter) aka Scripting Guy is kicking off another guest blogger week  (Nov 28th 2011) with my guest blog post, Four Easy Ways to Import CSV Files to SQL Server with PowerShell. The post demonstrates the following approaches to importing CSVs into a SQL… Read more

Managing SQL Server security changes in mass is something which screams automate it. Let’s look a at few examples using either T-SQL, a Centeral Management Server and Powershell.

Task #1 Remove a SQL Server Login from the Sysadmin Role

Let’s say you’re given the task to remove a login from… Read more

Providing delegated administration to groups that need to perform various security functions has always been a difficult task, but thanks to Powershell V3 (currently in CTP 1 as of this blog post) and PowerGUI we have new tools to provide a solution.

The Problem

You have groups outside of database… Read more