Author: admin

At TBC Corp. (Tire Kingdom) I scheduled the second PowerShell meeting for September 28th close to noon.  A give a 2hr PowerShell Deep Dive where everyone brought their laptops so they could follow along the session.  It was a total success!  I had 15 people signed up and 30 showed up for this session.

This was a diversified group of people which included: System Administrators(Windows, Linus, iSeries, SAP), Data Center Operators, Business Intelligence Developers, SQL Server Administrator and even some Business Analyst.  The general overview went well. The whole group was very interested in learning about PowerShell.

It all happened thanks for the support of all the technologies managers which realized this technology need to be adopted and embraced in their daily responsibilities.  This is opening to new opportunities to improve productivity.

I’m honored to be part of TBC Corp organization to allow me to be an “influencer” and provide guidance to this amazing technology.  I thanks Microsoft MVP program for helping me in accomplishing my goals and keeping up-to-date with technology.

I’m planning to do more TBC PowerShell Monthly meetings so they can easily adopt PowerShell and its amazing new features such as Desired State Configuration.

I’m so excited!!

I love working with PowerShell. Yes! I admitted. And, I love using SAPIEN Technology “PowerShell Studio” product and specially when I can develop a productive windows application for our Data Center team to use. This make my and their job easy to handle.

I just develope a Windows application to handle our company tables updates which monitor failures and recovery via PowerShell. The SAP 3rd party vendor application our team are using is old and doesn’t give any productive way to handle failures and recovery for these nightly tasks. And, here’s where PowerShell comes to the rescue.

So, one on the main components in building this Windows application is the use of the Datagrid. As PowerShell has a very useful Out-Gridview cmdlet but SAPIEN product gives you the .NET Visual Studio look-a-like feel for developing Windows Application.

The recent enhancements to the Out-GridView cmdlet has made it powerful and very useful command:

1. The use of filtering the data.
2. The use of the ‘-passthru” parameter so you select one or multiple items.
3. The use of the “-title” parameter.

Now, getting back to using a Datagrid in a SAPIEN PowerShell Windows Application. PowerShell Studio give us the ability to build Windows application with PowerShell code. For a person that have never use Visual Studio, the learning curve is short thanks to all the Wizards this product have included to get you started.

Now, sometime ago I posted a blog about creating a Windows application with a datagrid. Here’s the link:
1. http://www.maxtblog.com/2015/04/playing-with-powershell-studio-2015-windows-form-12/
2. http://www.maxtblog.com/2015/04/playing-with-powershell-studio-2015-windows-form-22/

After I posted the above blog articles,my MVP friend June Blender, remind me that SAPIEN had a snippet “ConvertTo-DataTable” which can be use to convert the PowerShell object to be loaded to the Datagrid. Here’s the blog link:
http://www.maxtblog.com/2015/05/using-powershell-studio-2015-snippet-sample/

But just recently, while build more applications with Datagrid, I discover that the DateTime value returned in thedatagrid is incomplete and only shows the date.

So, I went back to my own version that build the object for the datagrid to verify that the datetime values are retained.
Then, I decided to create a function “ConvertTo-DataSetObject” which is a smaller version and seem to work with ‘datetime‘ values loaded to a Datagrid.

Then, I added the function to my User snippet section. Here’s the function “ConvertTo-DataSetObject” code snippet:

[sourcecode language=”powershell”]
function ConvertTo-DataSetObject
{
<# .SYNOPSIS Convert an object to a dataset object for a datagrid. .DESCRIPTION Convert an object to a dataset object for a datagrid by create a global variable "$global:dsObj". .PARAMETER InputObject This parameter will accept any PowerShell variable. .EXAMPLE PS C:\> ConvertTo-DataSetObject -InputObject $psObject

.NOTES
This function is useful when creating object for a datagrid component.
#>
Param (
[object]$InputObject
)

#Create DataSet Object
$global:dsObj = New-Object System.Data.DataSet;

#Create DataTable
$global:dtObj = New-Object System.Data.DataTable("PSObjTable");
$dtCols = $global:dtObj.Columns; $dtRows = $global:dtObj.Rows;

## – Populate Columns
foreach ($c in ($InputObject | gm -MemberType ‘*Property’).Name)
{
$x = 1;
($global:dtObj.Columns.Add().ColumnName = $c);
};

## – Populate Rows:
foreach ($c in $InputObject)
{
## Initialize row:
$nwRow = $global:dtObj.NewRow();

## Data
foreach ($c2 in ($InputObject | gm -MemberType ‘*Property’).name)
{
$nwRow[$c2] = ($c).$c2;
}
## Add row to object:
$global:dtObj.Rows.Add($nwRow);
};

$global:dsObj.Tables.Add($global:dtObj);

};

[/sourcecode]

Here some additional tips when working with datagrid component using the following:

In the Datagrid properties:
1. Add a descriptive text under Captiontext.
2. Set the ReadOnly to True.

Using code to resize all column before display the datagrid:
[sourcecode language=”powershell”]

$datagrid1.PreferredColumnWidth = ‘120’;
:
ConvertTo-DataSetObject -InputObject $d;
$datagrid1.SetDataBinding($dsObj, "PSObjTable");

[/sourcecode]

More to learn and education never stops.

Now that Windows 10 has arrived take advantage of the new tools to start developing applications. Check out PowerShell version 5.0 and the new Visual Studio 2015 with its tools.

Take advantage of all the free training provided by both Microsoft people and MVP’s by connecting to either Microsoft Virtual Academy and Channel 9.  There are no excuses, just do it!

Click on the following banners for more information; (its free)

Don’t forget to check out the new Microsoft PowerShell at:

• Microsoft Blogs MSDN – PowerShell blog site: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/
• Microsoft new online home of PowerShell: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell

Also, take the opportunity to check out our PowerShell community sites, such as:

• http://www.PowerShell.org/
• http://www.PowerShellMagazine.com/
• http://powershellgroup.org/

All these are GREAT source of information about PowerShell.  Along with it you can find other organizations that provide free registrations to webcasts, such as:

• 1. Idera’s Geek Synch: https://www.idera.com/events/geeksync
• 2. PASS (Professional Association of SQL Server) virtual chapters, which you’ll find PowerShell included: http://www.sqlpass.org/PASSChapters/VirtualChapters.aspx

And, for affordable online training check Pluralsight Video Library: http://www.pluralsight.com/

So, as you can see, there’s plenty of resources available to start your education in Microsoft Technologies.

Go ahead and don’t wait any longer!

A live Florida PowerShell User Group session at PC Professor in West Palm has to be rescheduled to a later date. Topic: “Integrating PowerShell in Visual Studio Community“.

For more information and registration:  (Coming soon)

I’m hoping to provide more live presentation at this location in the future. Stay tuned!!

Also, our online Florida PowerShell User Group meeting is pleased to have PowerShell MVP Trevor Sullivan on August 27th at 7:00pm. Topic: “Microsoft Azure Cloud Automation using PowerShell“.

For more information and registration: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/florida-powershell-user-group-monthly-meeting-august-2015-tickets-18088286552

Come and join us on any of these free events!

Recorded Thursday – 05/28/2015 7:00pm
Speaker Bio: Maximo Trinidad, (Microsoft MVP – PowerShell)

Topic: “PowerShell SQL Server SMO Simplicity” –
In this presentation I will be showing how easy it is to use PowerShell the extract information from SQL Server. I will cover creating, discovering, and formattting objects which is part of how you use PowerShell. At the same time, I will show the use of SMO to connect and interact with your SQL Server engine to collect information.

Download presentation script file:

I’ve been using Devart – dbForge Studio for SQL Server mainly for helping documenting some of my legacy databases and to build some T-SQL script to embed in my PowerShell scripts.

This is a Great tool to have in your SQL arsenal. Check it out!

Download free for 30 days evaluation copy: https://www.devart.com/dbforge/sql/studio/download.html

* Customized Skin
* Database Comparison
* .. Many more interesting features.

Here are some pictures showing what I like about this product:

Check it out!

This year they are uploading all SQLPass Virtual Chapter recorded Online meeting in their YouTube Channel at the following link: http://youtube.com/PowerShellVirtualChapter