In my last post I reviewed some the format cmdlets. Now I will play with the Out-Gridview cmdlet.
Windows PowerShell 2.0 provides a few new tools that help to treat you more like a human than a machine. For example, by using the Out-Gridview cmdlet after retrieving a list of items, you can have the output is pipelined to a separate window (Graphic 24).
Get-Service | Out-Gridview

From this window, the list can be sorted by clicking the column header. However, this is output from the command, not the objects themselves, preventing any manipulation directly from this window. For example, you cannot right-click an item here to get a context menu to appear in order to stop or start a service.

The PowerShell grid also includes a rudimentary filtering function, showing only those services whose returned data includes a specified keyword. Simply type that keyword in the text box labeled Search. After entering the keyword, the grid filters out any items that do not include that keyword in at least one of the columns.

If you want to limit the filter to a specific column, type the column name followed by a colon, and then the filter string, reducing the results to four services on the computer in this example.

In my next post we get into variables and types.

In my last post I talked about the format cmdlets. Now I will continue to examine the format cmdlets.
Using the Format-Table cmdlet with no property names specified to format the output of the Get-Process command, provides exactly the same output returned without performing any formatting. The reason is that processes are usually displayed in a tabular format, as are most Windows PowerShell objects.
The displayed properties can be controlled by any of the format cmdlets by leveraging the property parameter. In this example, the format of the table displays with three specific properties.
Get-Service m* | Format-Table -Property Status, Name, ServiceType

Before I show an example of a more advanced formatting command, let’s look at some sorting. The Sort-Object cmdlet sorts objects in ascending or descending order based on the values of properties of the object.
You can specify a single property or multiple properties (for a multi-key sort) and you can select a case-sensitive or case-insensitive sort. You can also direct Sort-Object to display only the objects with a unique value for a particular property. This command displays a sort of services by status.
Get-Service m* | Sort-Object Status

You can also perform advanced formatting by combining formatting commands and adding some grouping. This command sorts the service list by status, before passing the output to the format-table command, which groups the output by status. In the displayed output the stopped and running services are grouped together, and under each status is a table containing the name and display name of each service.
Get-Service m* | Sort-Object Status | Format-Table –Group Status -Property Name, DisplayName

In my next post we will look at the Output commands.

In my last post I wrapped up the format cmdlets. Now I will take a look at the output cmdlets.
Windows PowerShell provides several cmdlets that let you control data output directly. These cmdlets share two important characteristics.
First, they generally transform data to some form of text. They do this because they output the data to system components that require text input. This means they need to represent the objects as text. Therefore, the text is formatted as you see it in the Windows PowerShell console window.
Second, these cmdlets use the Windows PowerShell verb Out because they send information out from Windows PowerShell to somewhere else. The Out-Host cmdlet is no exception: the host window display is outside of Windows PowerShell. This is important because when data is sent out of Windows PowerShell, it is actually removed. Because of this, any output cmdlets needs to be put at the end of the pipeline, otherwise the data is sent out of Windows PowerShell and any subsequent commands will have nothing to process.
The Output cmdlets are Out-Default, Out-File, Out-GridView, Out-Host, Out-Null, Out-Printer, and Out-String.
Output can be sent to a file by using the Out-File cmdlet. The following command line sends a list of services to the file C:\temp\serviceslist.txt:
Get-Service | Out-File -FilePath C:\temp\serviceslist.txt

The results of using the Out-File cmdlet may not be what you expect if you are used to traditional output redirection. You must be aware of the context in which the Out-File cmdlet operates to understand its behavior.
By default, the Out-File cmdlet creates a Unicode file. This is the best default in the long run, but it means that tools that expect ASCII files will not work correctly with the default output format. The Out-file formats file contents to look like console output, causing the output to be truncated just as it is in a console window in most circumstances.
The Out-Null cmdlet is designed to immediately discard any input it receives, which is useful for discarding unnecessary data obtained as a side-effect of running a command. When entering the following command (Graphic 22), the command results stating that the directory was created are not delivered.
New-Item -Path C:\ -Name test -Type Directory | Out-Null

The Out-Printer cmdlet routes the output to the specified printer. The Out-String cmdlet converts the objects that Windows PowerShell manages into an array of strings. By default, Out-String accumulates the strings and returns them as a single string, but you can use the stream parameter to direct Out-String to return one string at a time. This cmdlet lets you search and manipulate string output as you would in traditional shells when object manipulation is less convenient.

In my next post we will look at the Out-Gridview cmdlet.

I hadn’t used my SQL Azure is several weeks and was surprised when I was unable to add new databases and play around anymore. I had received some e-mails regarding SQL Azure but hadn’t bothered to read them yet. Afraid I would have to pay to continue to use my account, I looked at the options to continue with SQL Azure. I was pleased to find out there is a special introductory offer available on the Microsoft Online Customer Portal. This offer allows you to use SQL Azure free up to a certain usage each month. If you go over that amount, you only pay for the amount of time you use it past the free usage amount. This is great because I can continue to try out SQL Azure without putting a lot of money into it right now.

Last month I started looking into the new features of Office 2010, starting with Microsoft Word 2010. This month I’m going to take a look at Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint.

Let’s start by taking a look at just a few of the new features and improvements in Excel 2010.

New templates save you time by letting choose from a format that contains common fields.

A new feature called Slicer lets you filter and drill-down so you can more easily find the specific information you need.

Sparklines is a new charting feature that allows you to create charges and graphs in a single cell, giving you a quick way to spot trends and patterns.

The Backstage view improves on the File menu from previous versions, allowing multiple ways to save, share, and even publish your spreadsheets to SharePoint.

The PowerPivot for Excel add-in helps you model and analyze large amounts of data. With this, you can combine data from multiple sources, including databases, other spreadsheets, and so on.

Excel 2010 offers improved performance by taking advantage of 64-bit processing and multithreading.

All in all, the visual features of Excel are better looking, more powerful, and more easily integrated, and Excel 2010 makes it easier than ever to access your data, by using Excel Web App or Excel Mobile 2010.