Previous versions of the CTP have come with a sample Provider which you could use to access Azure storage (blobs, queues, and tables), but this actually provides demonstration of creating runspaces and executing pipelines in the cloud.

Now to see what version is running in the cloud!

What does that have to do with PowerShell and administrative tools?  The specifics of their conversation don’t have a lot of relevance to administrators and scripters, but one of the directions that their conversation took really resonated with me.

Alan throws the first punch – He likes Herding Code because it’s about real software development rather than development in the Microsoft bubble.  It’s about the tool users rather than the tool builders and it’s about honest feedback.

As administrators, we need to make sure the developers of the applications that we use and administer provide us the tools we need to efficiently run our networks.  Microsoft has gotten the message loud and clear.  Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, and TechEd 2009 LA confirmed that.  There weren’t many sessions where you didn’t hear something about PowerShell and there aren’t many products where PowerShell isn’t making inroads into the management structure.

Kudos to Jeffrey Snover and the awesome management technologies team for really selling this internally at Microsoft.

Another point made on the podcast was that Microsoft needed to do more to encourage better development practices… Can those same developers say that their products encourage better application management practices?

Now, we as the users of PowerShell need to step up and convince demand better administrative tooling from our vendors and internal development staffs.  Companies like Quest, VMWare, Idera,  Compellent, and others have gotten the message, but there are still many, many other products out there and many internal applications that suffer from inflexibility.

Web interfaces and GUI tools are nice and can be considered the icing on the cake.  A true manageable application allows for consistent and repeatable actions in an easy to maintain structure, as well as providing flexibility to integrate other potential solutions.  PowerShell provides a lot of that right in the box and allows administrators to bridge the gap and create their own solutions that might not have been supported yet (ever hear – “it’s in the next version”).

So, here is the call to action:

Rise up and demand proper administrative interfaces.

Talk to your managers about the benefits of streamlined application management using a consistent interface across multiple platforms and applications.

Take a developer to lunch and explain how you want to help make using his product a better experience from the application management side.

Let’s take our cue from the oft repeated concept in that Herding Code podcast – there is a need for candid feedback and it is all about the tools that we have to live in and work with every day.

If by chance one of the guys from the Herding Code podcast (or any other developer-centric podcast like .NET Rocks, Deep Fried Bytes, or StackOverflow) happens onto this post and wants to talk further, I’m available.  There are also a good number of PowerShell MVPs and community bloggers who I’m sure would love to provide some “candid feedback” to “developers in the trenches doing real development”.

I’ve been working on some data conversion at work, converting records from one system to a new system.  I’ve built quite a library of SQL queries with PowerShell wrappers for dealing with data in the first system, but I don’t have the same luxury with the new system.

The new system does, however, have a nice set of stored procedures that make moving data into their application much easier.

I started writing my conversion scripts in PowerShell, since I do have to do some processing on the records to accommodate the new workflow and data layout.  I was looking at having to call almost 100 stored procedures through various parts of this process.  That is a lot of boiler plate code or referring back to the database often to check parameter names and types.  So, I’ve written a little PowerShell script that will take stored procedures (either as a parameter or from the pipeline) and create a function that wraps that stored procedure.

The benefits of this are great with V2 CTP3 or with a more advanced editor (one that will provide tab completion on parameters).

One a wider scope, I think that this type of utility is one of PowerShell’s great strengths.  Using PowerShell for metaprogramming (another example here on the Telling Machine blog) can be a great time saver.  I spent a couple of hours working on this script, but it would have cost me much more time to handle each case individually.

Now, when I hear “metaprogramming”, my head starts to hurt a bit as I start to think about programs about programs about programs, but this isn’t that bad.  PowerShell makes this pretty easy to understand though.  To create a function dynamically, all that is needed is a string that contains text that the PowerShell runtime can evaluate (PowerShell will check for syntax errors, but not logic errors – as is the case with any script or function).

Example:

$text = ‘Get-ChildItem *.ps1 | Measure-Object’

Set-Item –Path function:global:Get-PowerShellScriptCount –Value $Text

This takes advantage of the Function provider and creates a function object in the global scope with the specified name and $Text is turned into a scriptblock.  I can then call that function as needed.

Since I know PowerShell, to build dynamic functions I just have to create text that can be evaluated to do the function I need.

Here’s what my script does after it runs a query against the database to get the stored procedure’s text:

1. parses the text to get the parameter names and types
2. using the names and types, it sets the parameters for the function (if someone wants to add some logic to make it type safe, that would rock!)
3. builds the text to create a SqlConnection object to handle the database connection
4. builds the text to create a SqlCommand object and sets the type of command to be a stored procedure
5. builds the text to populate the parameters, including setting up the output parameters (if any)
6. builds the text to run the stored procedure
7. builds the text to put any output parameters into a PSObject as properties.
8. create a new function with the name of the stored procedure and uses the text built in the previous steps as the scriptblock for the function.

What are you automating with PowerShell?

How about trying to automate some of your automation code?

New-StoredProcFunction.ps1 here.

PSMDTAG:metaprogramming sql stored procedure

UPDATED SCRIPT: Thanks to Chad Miller for the idea.. instead of parsing the text of the stored procedure, the parameter information is available in the Information_Schema.Parameters

• Windows Development and Frameworks
• Windows Mobile Development
• Office and SharePoint Development
• Developer Tools, Languages & Practices
• Web Development & User Experience

PowerShell Community’s own Marco Shaw (MVP) will be presenting the ONLY PowerShell session:

WIN300 Scripting the Microsoft .NET Framework Using Windows PowerShell
Now that PowerShell is part of the Microsoft Common Engineering Criteria, expect to see more and more PowerShell in Microsoft server products. This session looks at how PowerShell can be used to directly access the .NET Framework. Some simple examples are demonstrated, but also more advanced examples of using Windows Presentation Foundation (.NET 3.0) and LINQ (.NET 3.5) are discussed.

You can find more information about this event here or on Marco’s blog. 

I’m looking forward to seeing this presentation.  Hope to “see” you there!  Register now..

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