Michiel Wories' WebLog : SQL Server

PowerShell Tips & Tricks: Getting more detailed error information from PowerShell

mwories — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:41:00 GMT

Allen White wrote this handy blogpost on how to handle error message and get more information out of an error record:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/allen_white/archive/2009/06/08/handling-errors-in-powershell.aspx

There is an addtional method to get more information available. I found myself sending this little code snippet in email to many, and almost always I get the response that it saved that person with a ton of work, as new users to PowerShell are often left bewildered by the sparse error information; I had colleagues grabbing for the debugger to find the more detailed error messages...

An example; let's generate a simple error (recreate master will not work on most systems):

$db = new Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Database
$db.Name = "master"
$db.Parent = get-item .
$db.Create()
Exception calling "Create" with "0" argument(s): "Create failed for Database 'master'. "
At line:1 char:11
+ $db.Create( <<<< )

Not very helpful is it?

Here is where this little gem comes in:

$error[0]|format-list -force

Now let's take a look at the details this emits:

Exception      : System.Management.Automation.MethodInvocationException:
                        Exception calling "Create" with "0" argument(s): "Crea
                        te failed for Database 'master'. " ---> Microsoft.SqlSe
                        rver.Management.Smo.FailedOperationException: Create fa
                        iled for Database 'master'. ---> Microsoft.SqlServer.M
                        anagement.Common.ExecutionFailureException: An exceptio
                        n occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or
                        batch. ---> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Databas
                        e 'master' already exists. Choose a different database
                        name.
                           at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlEx
<cutting middle part out>
TargetObject          :
CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException
FullyQualifiedErrorId : DotNetMethodTargetInvocation
ErrorDetails          :
InvocationInfo        : System.Management.Automation.InvocationInfo

Well, now THAT's more like it!

As you can see the -force flag does a couple of nice things.

It concatenates the error messages into a somewhat understandable result.
It dumps stack information + all other error information avalable.

Generally it's a time saver as you have this command readily available for you at the command line.

Do you have any tips on error handling? I'd love to hear about it.

-Michiel

Talking about SQLPS (SQL Server Powershell extensions) on Runas Radio

mwories — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:42:00 GMT

I was recently interviewed on RunAs Radio on the new Powershell extensions that we developed for SQL Server 2008.

If you want to learn more about SQL Server Powershell download the podcast here : http://www.runasradio.com/default.aspx?showNum=75

If you listened to it then please post your feedback here.

Happy listening!

What? No cmdlets? -- SQL Server Powershell

mwories — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:25:00 GMT

When you start using the SQL Server Powershell extensions, you will find there are not a whole lot of cmdlets. The expectation is indeed that Powershell support means: cmdlets for every administrative operation you can perform. Did we miss something here? Nope, this is by design. We do intend to ship more cmdlets for common admin tasks, but our first goal was to unlock as many Object Models as we could in the first release.

We did provide some basic cmdlets to start you off with. We know that DBA's willl have tons of T-SQL scripts that they will not abandon immediately in favor of Powershell. These scripts can be integrated with Invoke-Sqlcmd. We also provided a cmdlet to evaluate Policies, something that will come in handy if you have a lot of servers to manage (see one of my previous posts that contains a reference to an excellent blog entry from Lara on this subject).

Right now you will find that you can navigate to four different object models:

SQL Server Relational Managenent Objects (SMO)
Policy Based Management Objects (DMF)
Data Collection (DC)
Server Registration

An interesting fact is that the SQL Provider that provides access to these models is almost totally agnostic about these models. It does navigation, and serves these objects to the Powershell host, but without any code that is aware of each of these models. It's made pretty generic and the plan is to start covering all other services (Analysis Server's AMO, RS, etc.) in the same fashion.

Now, back to 'where are the cmdlet's'.

We do plan to provider various common cmdlets for common tasks, such as backup, restore, transfer, adding logins and users (pending customer research). But with the provider serving up objects you have almost instant access to any adminstrative commands you need. Let me illustrate this with an example:

PS C:\> cd SQLSERVER:\SQL\W2K3-TEST3\KATMAI\Logins
PS SQLSERVER:\SQL\W2K3-TEST3\KATMAI\Logins> $t=get-item TEST
PS SQLSERVER:\SQL\W2K3-TEST3\KATMAI\Logins> $t.ChangePassword("asdasd182eqwke111AA")

With tab-completion you will be able to browse the available methods quickly, and changing the password is then a piece of cake.

Another thing to point out is that if you take a look at SMO, DMF, DC, RS, AMO, and the other object models you will find there are hundreds of different of objects and literally thousands of operations you can perform. Strictly speaking, if you were to provider full coverage you would end up with hundreds (maybe over a thousand) cmdlets. This makes discoverability quite cumbersome (let alone it is a huge investment to unlock something that is inherently available). And the complexity of some of the cmdlets would make it not practical. Take for example the Transact-SQL statement to create a table. This is a very hard thing to encapsulate in a cmdlet (or new-item). Go try to think up the cmdlet to support all of CREATE TABLE. This is where the provider will be your friend. Issue a Get-Item to grab the parent. Instantiate a new SMO object and modify it to your liking. Then parent it with the reference you received from the Provider and create it. This is how this looks like:

cd SQLSERVER:\SQL\W2K3-MVP\DEFAULT\Databases\tempdb
$t = new-object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Table
$t.Parent = (get-item .)
$t.Name ="test"
$c = new-object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Column
$c.Parent = $t
$c.Name = "c1"
$c.DataType = ([Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.DataType]::Int)
$t.Columns.Add($c)
$t.Create()

This is a simple example. Creating a basic database is even simpler. But if you need more options, it's all there, under your fingertips. And you don't need to wait until we provide a cmdlet for it. But we will provide cmdlets for everyday tasks. If you have any opinion which cmdlets are important to you, it would be good to hear from you.

Some background on the use of minishells, such as SQLPS

mwories — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:58:00 GMT

Jeffrey Snover posted a very clear article about minishells and SQL Server's use of it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2008/06/23/sql-minishells.aspx

Jeffrey is Powershell's Architect, well respected in the Powershell community, and it's good to read about his perspective on this.

Evaluating SQL Server Policies through Powershell

mwories — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:27:00 GMT

I found this ping-back on my previous blog post which gives a good overview of one very useful cmdlet that we ship with the Powershell extensions that SQL Server 2008 will deliver. A very helpful article one of the SQL Server MVPs, Lara Rubbelke, on the use of Invoke-PolicyEvaluation:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/lara_rubbelke/archive/2008/06/19/evaluating-policies-on-demand-through-powershell.aspx

SQL Server Powershell is here!

mwories — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:35:00 GMT

I am very excited that SQL Server will ship with a pretty solid first release of Powershell extensions with SQL Server 2008. The SQL Server Powershell extensions deliver on a vision that we’ll expand on in the next releases to come. So what’s in this release of SQL Server Powershell?

- SQLPS – a minishell that gives you a complete pre-configured Powershell with all of SQL Server’s extensions preloaded.

- SQL Server Agent integration – A new job subsystem for Powershell

- SQL Server Management Studio Integration – context menus on every applicable node in Object Explorer (with connection context reuse. Including SQL security!)

- Four new Providers! – new providers for SQL Server relational engine, Registered Servers, Data Collection, and SQL Server Policy Management

- SQLCMD integration – SQLCMD compatible script execution within Powershell (reuses the SQL Server connection context, and even database context of the provider!)

- SQL Server Policy Management integration – Allows evaluation of any Policy

- Various other cmdlets – support the provider, such as conversion of a SMO Urn to a Powershell path, encoding and decoding of SQL identifiers.

- SQL Server Powershell redist – allows you to install SQL Server Powershell with your application or on any machine you need to have it on (this still being built so with the caveat it may be shipped later, or being cut altogether – don’t flame me yet).

As always with every release, a lot of things were left on the cutting floor, such as Powershell editor integration & execution within SSMS (with grid output), Powershell script generation from any SSMS menu, SMO objects generating Powershell script, more cmdlets that address common user scenarios, Analysis Server support. And this doesn’t include a long list of ideas that for the sake of brevity will not discuss here.

The excitement about this release is palpable, and there is no shortness of ideas for the next releases. I think you’ll be pleased with this first release.

---

From recent posts and email I know there is some explanation needed why we ship ‘pre-packaged’ SQLPS functionality. Let me address that here as well.

SQLPS is slated to be replacing SQLCMD and other tools that people now use to do ad-hoc management and management task automation. It’s more than that, we want uniformity of management across ALL of SQL Server services, whether it is Analysis Server, SQL Server, Integration Services, Reporting Services etc.

SQLPS.exe is a Minishell (also called “custom shell”). It is a form of pre-packaging of Powershell functionality, and it is available to anyone who wants to do this (make-shell). It is regular Powershell, albeit with limitations that the Powershell team decided to impose on it – it is a ‘closed’ shell, which doesn’t allow adding other snapins.

We are shipping SQLPS to make life of our DBA’s a whole lot easier. If they need to have quick access to the SQL providers, assemblies, cmdlets, default security settings, everything is there. We could have possibly done this through a startup script but not everything can be accomplished this way. We are changing the default security settings, without affecting the settings for overall Powershell. Minishells have their own settings.

We also use SQLPS to execute SQL Agent jobs. We pipe the data into SQLPS, as we cannot pass it on the cmdline. From that perspective it serves our purpose very well. This is somewhat harder (if not impossible) to accomplish using the startup script approach.

That said, in the next release we will look into it to ship a SQPS that is more flexible. Listening to the feedback, we should have a form of packaging that allows users to add cmdlets/providers.

We are however not stopping anyone to create their own startup scripts that include the cmdlets and/or providers for SQL Server, Exchange, IIS etc. etc. To get you started on this, here is a script that exactly does that:

#
# Initialize-SqlpsEnvironment.ps1
#
# Loads the SQL Server provider extensions
#
# Usage: Powershell -NoExit -Command "& '.\Initialize-SqlPsEnvironment.ps1'"
#
# Change log:
# June 14, 2008: Michiel Wories
#   Initial Version
# June 17, 2008: Michiel Wories
#   Fixed issue with path that did not allow for snapin\provider:: prefix of path
#   Fixed issue with provider variables. Provider does not handle case yet
#   that these variables do not exist (bug has been filed)

$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

$sqlpsreg="HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.PowerShell.sqlps"

if (Get-ChildItem $sqlpsreg -ErrorAction "SilentlyContinue")
{
    throw "SQL Server Powershell is not installed."
}
else
{
    $item = Get-ItemProperty $sqlpsreg
    $sqlpsPath = [System.IO.Path]::GetDirectoryName($item.Path)
}

#
# Preload the assemblies. Note that most assemblies will be loaded when the provider
# is used. if you work only within the provider this may not be needed. It will reduce
# the shell's footprint if you leave these out.
#
$assemblylist =
"Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.Dmf ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlWmiManagement ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.SmoExtended ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.RegisteredServers ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Sdk.Sfc ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlEnum ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.RegSvrEnum ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.WmiEnum ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.ServiceBrokerEnum ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfoExtended ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Collector ",
"Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.CollectorEnum"

foreach ($asm in $assemblylist)
{
$asm = [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName($asm)
}

#
# Set variables that the provider expects (mandatory for the SQL provider)
#
Set-Variable -scope Global -name SqlServerMaximumChildItems -Value 0
Set-Variable -scope Global -name SqlServerConnectionTimeout -Value 30
Set-Variable -scope Global -name SqlServerIncludeSystemObjects -Value $false
Set-Variable -scope Global -name SqlServerMaximumTabCompletion -Value 1000

#
# Load the snapins, type data, format data
#
Push-Location
cd $sqlpsPath
Add-PSSnapin SqlServerCmdletSnapin100
Add-PSSnapin SqlServerProviderSnapin100
Update-TypeData -PrependPath SQLProvider.Types.ps1xml
update-FormatData -prependpath SQLProvider.Format.ps1xml
Pop-Location

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow 'SQL Server Powershell extensions are loaded.'
Write-Host
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow 'Type "cd SQLSERVER:\" to step into the provider.'
Write-Host
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow 'For more information, type "help SQLServer".'

Now, go and use SQL Server Powershell :-). Give us your feedback, and I promise you we’ll listen to it, and we’ll keep on improving on it. This is written for you, the DBA, the IT-PRO, the casual user who needs to do some ad hoc administration or anyone else who uses Powershell for their administrative tasks.

Michiel

How to change the SQL Server password programmatically

mwories — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 02:32:00 GMT

Every now and the question comes up how to programmatically modify the service account or password of SQL Server. There basically two ways to accomplish this, using SMO, or WMI. This article shows you how to use WMI and VBScript to accomplish this task.

There are a couple of things you need to know.

SQL Server does not need a reboot when the password is modified. We (SQL Server Team) spent quite a bit of time ensuring you do not suffer any unnecessary downtime when performing an operation that has to happen regularly, when password are expiring. Everyone likes a ‘no reboot’ clause, right?
When changing the account and password, the service does need a reboot, but the WMI Provider does this for you. In fact, if the service is not started it will be brought up for a short moment. If it already running it will be restarted. The reasons are as follows:

The service master key needs to be re-encrypted
Various other security settings are done

Because the WMI Provider performs various operations besides changing the service account, other account change methods like ‘sc’ or the standard service control panel are not supported. You may see that the service will not start in some cases.
Changing the password only tells the service that the password has changed. If you want to change the account’s password, use a command like NET USER. You need to run that first.

The following scripts allow you to change the service account + password, or only the password:

setaccount.vbs:

‘ Set the account and password

set svr = GetObject("WINMGMTS:\\.\root\Microsoft\SqlServer\ComputerManagement:SqlService.ServiceName='MSSQL$YUKON',SQLServiceType=1")

svr.SetServiceAccount ".\TestUser", "NewPassword!!"

setpwd.vbs:

‘ Set the password

set svr = GetObject("WINMGMTS:\\.\root\Microsoft\SqlServer\ComputerManagement:SqlService.ServiceName='MSSQL$YUKON',SQLServiceType=1")

svr.SetServiceAccountPassword "", "NewPassword2!!"

You need to change 'MSSQL$YUKON' to match your instance name (replace ‘YUKON’ with the instance name, or the entire string with MSSQLSERVER for the default instance). Of course the account and password need to be changed as well.

Try this on a test server first before running this on a production server.

I hope this is helpful,

Michiel

Add oil to fire: SMO and Monad -- a flammable combination

mwories — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 22:35:00 GMT

Euan pointed me to an interesting article about the use of Monad together with SMO. Those who know me well, know I am somewhat of a scripting biggot and still install Cygwin on all of my boxes as I cannot live without bash, awk, perk, sed, expr and the various other UNIX tools that I have used over the years. I have been somewhat of a Monad sceptic, but once I saw what the vision behind it was I was quickly turned around. Now history will tell whether MSH is going to be the big hit I expect it to be. But there are several teams here already deeply investing in it and Exchange is a team that already showcases a deep use of Monad and event built their management UI on top of it. SQL Server DBA's have potentially a lot to gain from a good Monad implementation with a set of well implemented cmdlets*.

I'd love to know what type of cmdlets you'd like to see for SQL Server/SMO, bye the way... This is something we're looking into for the next release.

*If want to know what a cmdlet is, take a look at this deck or this MSDN article.

SQL Server 2005 -- it's a wrap; but wait -- it's just the beginning!

mwories — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 18:54:00 GMT

I'm sure there are lots of coworkers blogging about this. We're done with SQL Server 2005 and it's a very interesting and good feeling. Having worked 5 year on the project, many long days, many weekends, having to fight many battles, and at the same time giving an incredible amount of attention to the security of our products with various massive security initiatives, shipping SQL Server 2000 SP3 (which was a big SP) and many other parallel work items made this a very high intensity effort of the entire team. One of my co-workers, Kirk, called it closure. I am not calling it that. It's more of a sense of letting a bright and smart prodigy go into the world, ready to do many great works. At the same time keeping an eye out and providing guidance where needed. It's a good feeling, not of closure, but of endless possibilities. The prodigy will be doing more than its masters can imagine it's capable of. The future of SQL Server 2005 is very bright...!

SMO Samples Galore

mwories — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:47:00 GMT

With much of the SQL Server 2005 devcelopment behind us, I am starting to have some more time to post some SMO samples. Most of these are inspired on questions in the beta newsgroups or the SMO/DMO forum.

Additionally, SQL Server 2005 ships with a pretty wide variety of samples. In fact, there are more SMO samples than there are for any other product area, and we have been adding samples up till a a few weeks ago (from here it is pretty much locked down).

Let me know if you have any sample requests!

Upcoming at TechED: Web Based SQL Server Management Tool (Shared Source!)

mwories — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 20:00:00 GMT

Visual Studio .NET 2003 shipped a web based sample application for management of SQL Server, based on ASP.NET and SQL-DMO. We're currently working on an updated version of that tool. This is a quick list of the things that we change:

Revamped UI
Improved navigation
Improved architecture to make adding new components easier
Fully based on ASP.NET 2.0 and SMO
Works now with SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005

We focussed on extensibility, so adding new features is a breeze. In fact, I created Assembly management from scratch within 2 hours on the plane to TechED, which I will demo coming Wednesday.

This tool is going to be made available as a Shared Source project. This means you can contribute to this project if you sign up to be a team member; or download the code and modify it for your own purposes (and push your changes back to the development team). We're not ready yet to allow you to sign up for team member, as we're still working on the '1.0 release', but if you're curious how it looks like, take a look at http://microsoftsqltools.com/. You can already sign up as member, and place feature requests as well. If you feel strong about certain features, I advice you to place feedback already. The earlier you are, the more chance it will make it as a feature!

If you're at TechED Europe, you can see a demo of this new tool:
"DAT310 Programming SQL Server Management Objects (SMO)" (Wed Jul 6 12:00 - 13:15)

SQL Server: Table Partitioning in SQL Server 2005

mwories — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 22:07:00 GMT

Table and Index partitioning is one if the new SQL Server 2005 features that willl improve life for the DBA and application developer quite a bit. It allows Indexes and Tables to be partitioned across multiple file groups. Partitioned tables and indexes, are fully manageable with SMO. Here is a quick sample to get you started, with not too much explanation as speaks for itself, mostly. Let me know if you have questions!

Server svr = new Server();

Database db = new Database(svr, "MyDatabase");
db.FileGroups.Add(new FileGroup(db, "PRIMARY"));
db.FileGroups.Add(new FileGroup(db, "SECONDARY"));
db.FileGroups[0].Files.Add(new DataFile(db.FileGroups[0], "datafile1", @"c:\db1.mdf"));
db.FileGroups[1].Files.Add(new DataFile(db.FileGroups[1], "datafile2", @"c:\db2.mdf"));
db.Create();

PartitionFunction pf = new PartitionFunction(db, "MyPartitionFunction");
pf.PartitionFunctionParameters.Add(new PartitionFunctionParameter(pf, DataType.Int));
pf.RangeType = RangeType.Left;
pf.RangeValues = new object[] { 5000 };
pf.Create();

PartitionScheme ps = new PartitionScheme(db, "MyPartitionScheme");
ps.PartitionFunction = "MyPartitionFunction";
ps.FileGroups.Add("PRIMARY");
ps.FileGroups.Add("SECONDARY");
ps.Create();

Table t = new Table(db, "MyTable");
t.Columns.Add(new Column(t, "c1", DataType.Int));
t.Columns.Add(new Column(t, "c2", DataType.VarChar(100)));
t.PartitionScheme = "MyPartitionScheme";
t.PartitionSchemeParameters.Add(new PartitionSchemeParameter(t, "c1"));
t.Create();

// Script out the objects (for educational purposes; optional)
SqlSmoObject[] objs = new SqlSmoObject[4];
objs[0] = db;
objs[1] = pf;
objs[2] = ps;
objs[3] = t;

for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++)
{
    Console.WriteLine("-- " + objs[i].ToString());
    foreach (string s in ((IScriptable)(objs[i])).Script())
    {
        Console.WriteLine(s);
    }
    Console.WriteLine("GO");
}

Scripting in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 -- Web Cast has finished

mwories — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 22:03:00 GMT

I just finished the Scripting in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 webcast.

Thanks all for being online (and also thank you MVP's for answering questions!) I was a little nervous doing this (it's a big deck with lots of demos) but I think it went quite OK.

Let me know if you have any requests/comments!

Q&A, Samples, Demo Script has been posted (click here).

Thanks,

Michiel

Forums: http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn (for SQLCMD go to SQL Server Tools General)

Blogs of MVP's who helped answering questions:
http://spaces.msn.com/members/drsql (Louis Davidson)
http://users.drew.edu/skass (Steve Kass)
http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/ktegels (Ken Tegels)
http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly (Kimberly Tripp)

SQL Server: Capture Object changes with SMO Capture Mode

mwories — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 00:51:00 GMT

In a previous article I have showed how a SMO object can be serialized into a Transact-SQL script, which allows you to recreate the object. What if you want to have the script that is emitted when you changed one or more properties of an object? In that case Capture Mode comes in handy. This switches the ServerConnection object in a state where it starts capturing all statements that SMO emits instead of sending these to the server. The following sample illustrates how it is used.

Server svr = new Server();

Database db = svr.Databases["MySmoTestDatabase"];

// First create new test database, if it does not exist
if (db == null)
{
    db = new Database(svr, "MySmoTestDatabase");
    db.Create();
}

// Set an option (we flip it to on or off depending orginal state)
db.DatabaseOptions.AutoClose = !db.DatabaseOptions.AutoClose;

// Switch SMO in capture mode
svr.ConnectionContext.SqlExecutionModes = SqlExecutionModes.CaptureSql;

// Now perform the operation
db.Alter();

// Don't forget to switch back
svr.ConnectionContext.SqlExecutionModes = SqlExecutionModes.ExecuteSql;

// Put database back in original state
db.Refresh();

// Print script
foreach (string s in svr.ConnectionContext.CapturedSql.Text)

{
    Console.WriteLine(s);
}

Note the Refresh() near the end. This is needed to bring back the Database object in sync with the server again. It’s not enough to execute the script (if you would do that) to bring it in sync with the server.

SQL Server: SMO Scripting Basics

mwories — Sat, 07 May 2005 21:51:00 GMT

Let's first clarify what I mean by "scripting". It often happens during talks or when I explain SMO fundamentals that eyes gloss over, shortly after which the "what * do you mean by scripting" question pops up (replace the * with your favorite combination of adjective and noun to indicate bewilderment). For people who, unlike me, do not live their lives in SQL land, "scripting" means typically some kind of language script, like perl, VBScript, or others, that allows you, without the use of a development environment to author and execute code". Not so in this case. If I were to be precise, it means "serialize a SMO or DMO object into Transact-SQL". So now we have this out of the way, let's take a look at SMO Scripting.

SMO objects, when either just instantiated and not yet persisted, or just retrieved from the server, carry state. For example a StoredProcedure object has a name, a schema, a text body, and maybe some other optional properties. This state can be serialized into a Transact-SQL script that you may store, modify, or execute. As SQL Server’s primary language is Transact-SQL, it’s obvious that one of the tasks that the SMO object model has to perform very well is scripting. SMO objects can be scripted in 5 different ways:

By calling the Script() method on the object.
By instantiating a Scripter object, and pass in a reference of the object(s) to be scripted.
Advanced scripting: generating a script in 3 distinct phases (discovery, list, script)
By using the Transfer object.
Indirectly, by capturing the SQL output of the objects

I will discuss 1 and 2 and will dedicate some more posts on the other more advanced topics.

Basic Scripting

Let’s start with scripting an existing object, with no options specified (installing AdventureWorks will help running these samples):

Server svr = new Server();

foreach (string s in svr.Databases["AdventureWorks"].StoredProcedures["uspGetEmployeeManagers", "dbo"].Script())
{
      Console.WriteLine(s);
}

If you run this code, the script should be emitted to the console. So far pretty straightforward eh?

Scripting Options

If you want to do more than just scripting the object, there are scripting options that you can pass into the Script() method. There 2 ways to pass in Scripting options. The following 2 samples illustrate the different methods of passing in scripting options.

Server svr = new Server();

StoredProcedure sp = svr.Databases["AdventureWorks"].StoredProcedures["uspGetEmployeeManagers", "dbo"];

ScriptingOptions so = new ScriptingOptions();

so.IncludeHeaders = true;

so.SchemaQualify = true;

foreach (string s in sp.Script(so))

      Console.WriteLine(s);

In the next sample, you use the ScriptOption class. This class has various static members that each return an instance of a ScriptionOption class.

Server svr = new Server();

StoredProcedure sp = svr.Databases["AdventureWorks"].StoredProcedures["uspGetEmployeeManagers", "dbo"];

foreach (string s in sp.Script(ScriptOption.IncludeHeaders + ScriptOption.SchemaQualify))

      Console.WriteLine(s);

You can take advantage of the fact that the ScriptOption static members returns a ScriptingOption class (through implict conversion), as you can use it as an alternative to construct a Scriptingoption class:

ScriptingOptions so = ScriptOption.IncludeHeaders;

so.SchemaQualify = true;

Script modified objects

You can modify and script an object, without persisting its state. This sample shows how this can be accomplished:

Server svr = new Server();

StoredProcedure sp = svr.Databases["AdventureWorks"].StoredProcedures["uspGetEmployeeManagers", "dbo"];

sp.TextHeader = "-- Scripted at " + DateTime.Now.ToString() + "\n\n" + sp.TextHeader;

foreach (string s in sp.Script())
{
      Console.WriteLine(s);
}

Ensure that you either call the Refresh() method on the object once you are done, or persist the object by calling Alter(), as this temporary state may cause problems when this object is referenced again for other purposes.

Script non-existing objects

Alternative, you can instantiate a new object, and emit the script for it, without requiring it to exist on the server. In fact the below script will not even connect to the server; this happens all on your client.

Server svr = new Server();

Database db = new Database(svr, "MyDatabase");

db.DatabaseOptions.AutoClose = true;

foreach (string s in db.Script())
{

Console.WriteLine(s);
}

Using the Scripter object

If you call the Script() method on an object, what actually happens, is that in the background a Scripter() object is instantiated, which performs the various scripting operations. Whereas each object knows how to emit script, the Scripter object pulls it all together, and does special processing before or while generating the output. Let’s take a look how the Scripter object can be used to accomplish the same task as above (scripting a database).

Server svr = new Server();

Database db = new Database(svr, "MyDatabase");

db.DatabaseOptions.AutoClose = true;

Scripter scripter = new Scripter();

scripter.Server = svr;

scripter.Options.IncludeHeaders = true;

scripter.Options.SchemaQualify = true;

SqlSmoObject[] objs = new SqlSmoObject[1];

objs[0] = db;

scripter.Script(objs);

foreach (string s in scripter.Script(objs))

      Console.WriteLine(s);

The above samples I have touched on the basis of the scripting operations. In the next posts I will elaborate and show you more complex and elaborate ways to generate script. We made scripting extremely flexible, and hope that this first post helps you to get started with scripting.

Enjoy!