SQL Use of MiniShells

@ Jeffrey Snover

Marco Shaw — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:07:13 GMT

Thanks for a clear, sincere and honest explanation/justification for this.

Yes, the SQL team does put out great products and work very hard.

Some background on the use of minishells, such as SQLPS

Michiel Wories' WebLog — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:03:59 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

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Peter — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:45:49 GMT

Tone? Sorry, Microsoft, but I've noticed that polite questions and comments are ignored, and snippy comments are not. Consequently, you've trained me to never ask a polite question on a Microsoft forum -- I always start out rude, and continue to get ruder.

Not because I'm rude. People around me think I'm the very paragon of niceness and patience. But with Microsoft, rude==success and polite==fail.

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Don Jones — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:44:03 GMT

Mea culpa, where appropriate: http://concentratedtech.com/content/index.php/2008/06/23/powershell-sql-server-2008-the-official-word/

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Pete Gomersall — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:06:03 GMT

Jeffrey - your explanation does seem to imply that it was the communities fault that the GUI design problem was not caught. Doesn't Microsoft need to take the bulk of the "blame" as you (Microsoft) control the design, development and code review cycle? I think the community began to complain when the issue became apparent. Is this a case for a "PowerShell minishell design policy" at Microsoft - this seems sensible to me?

Pete

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Hal Rottenberg — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:56:17 GMT

Thank you very much for addressing this, Jeffrey. It's also important to reinforce (and the SQL team mentions this also on their blog, as did you) -- you can add the SQL snapins in a "regular" PS session! This minishell thing isn't quite so bad as it first seemed as long as we retain that add-pssnapin abaility (from outside the minishell).

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

PowerShellTeam — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:09:24 GMT

@Pete: My goal was not to assign blame. Sorry that it come out that way. As an engineer, I haven't found blame to be a tool that solves many problems. I'm more than happy to accept 100% of the blame if it allows us to move past that and discuss what things we can do to improve things in the future.

Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]

Windows Management Partner Architect

Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell

Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Smith Catar — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:07:11 GMT

I want something to blame.

I want to blame that Get-ChildItem doesn't have like -Mode parameter which select files by its Mode,

and does'nt give symbolic link and hard link special treatment.

User side wouldn't be able to solve this, so I think this issue doesn't suit forums or newsgroups and so on.

(Of course, we can solve this issue if we use longer alternative.)

Where should I blame?

@Smith Catar

Marco Shaw — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:22:08 GMT

Smith,

You need to record all of this on https://connect.microsoft.com.

See if you can manage your way through finding "Windows PowerShell". I know the feedback process for PowerShell on the connect site is hard to find.

Email me at marco UNDERSCORE shaw _AT_ hotmail _DOT_ com if you need help or have difficulty. I can send that feedback on connect back to Microsoft.

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Andy Tearle — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:42:03 GMT

Thanks JS for your notes .. almost 'lost' my dedication to PowerShell.

Regards,

The SQLPS Firestorm Part Duex

Dan's Blog — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:45:28 GMT

On the PowerShell team's blog Architect Jeffrey Snover addresses the recent firestorm on SQLPS. BTW:

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Karl Prosser — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:20:08 GMT

thanks for the clarification. If it is indeed the result of a make-shell, then i have no problem with it, but infered from various communications that it was fully self contained, and infered that it contained its own copy of the whole PowerShell engine, and could never get clarification if this was the case or not.

Despite the minishell being the loudest complaint, i think the biggest complaints were to do with urlencoded case sensitive provider paths, especially odd when in powershell it wouldn't be case sensitive, and in SQL it wouldn't either.

@Marco Shaw

Smith Catar — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:16:20 GMT

Tank you for your help.

I registered instantly.

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Tialen — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:44:21 GMT

so I installed powershell v2 and it errors out on basic commands such as ipconfig....

any idea?

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Anton — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:03:40 GMT

Thank you so much for addressing this.

@Tialen

Marco Shaw — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:13:00 GMT

Tialen,

You'll need to be more specific. I've never seen anyone have any problems running any regular DOS commands.

Best place to ask for help is either the microsoft.public.windows.powershell newsgroup

or the online forums:

http://forums.technet.microsoft.com/en-US/winserverpowershell/threads/

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Anon — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:38:10 GMT

I get very worried when you say that Powershell was not one of the design goals or regular work of the SQL designers. Shouldn't implementing easy administration with Powershell be a priory for all Microsoft product groups? After all, from now on it is included in the common engineering criteria, isn't it? Powershell should be implemented as much as possible by all Microsoft teams. Failure to do so marginalizes it and makes it looks as if Microsoft is made up of many little companies with different goals. In other word it creates a mess. I know that product teams have other priories but leaving Powershell out and making it into a side project for some pationate employees is shamefull, firstly for your team and all the hard work you have put in it and secodnly for all your customers. Why should you convince other product groups to adopt Powershell when Steve Ballmer himself said that all products would be made accessible from the command-line within 5 years. He said that 3 years ago I think. Have him to put force behind his words then.

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Vesta — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:20:00 GMT

i think that it is good to have a power shell!

Nice and just started!

the ice of it is being melted!

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Jakob Bindslet — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:19:57 GMT

Of course, some support for PowerShell in SQL2008 is better than none - however, to me it appears to be a beta feature. Maybe it will actually be done right in time for SQL2008 SP1 ?

re: SQL Use of MiniShells

Matt Phillips — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:37:40 GMT

So in SQL 2008 R2 you are going to ba able to add arbitrary snap-ins into the Powershell shell used by Sql Server Agent Jobs?

I want to be able to schedule consistency-check tasks which we have written as powershell cmdlets within a snap-in of our own