Tag: Sort-Object

Time to read: ~ 2 minutes

Words: 328

Welcome to T-SQL Tuesday, the monthly blog post invitational where we’re given a topic and asked to write about it.

This month we have John McCormack (Blog | Twitter) asking, “What are your go-to handy scripts“?

For this post, I’m going to break these down into different languages.

SQL

I once had the annoyingly complex T-SQL to change MS format time into a human-readable format memorised.

SELECT
    time_MS_format = [TimeMSFormat],
    converted_time = '2021-10-12 ' + 
    STUFF(
        STUFF(
            RIGHT('000000' + X.TimeMSFormat, 6), 3, 0, ':'
        ), 6, 0, ':'
    )
FROM (VALUES
     ('00000')
   , ('00500')
   , ('01000')
   , ('10000')
   , ('10500')
   , ('100000')
   , ('100500')
   , ('115500')
   , ('120000')
) X ([TimeMSFormat]);

Then I read a blog post from Kenneth Fisher (Blog | Twitter) about the in-built msdb database function dbo.agent_datetime.

SELECT
    time_MS_format = [TimeMSFormat],
    new_function = msdb.dbo.agent_datetime(20211012, X.TimeMSFormat)
FROM (VALUES
     ('00000')
   , ('00500')
   , ('01000')
   , ('10000')
   , ('10500')
   , ('100000')
   , ('100500')
   , ('115500')
   , ('120000')
) X ([TimeMSFormat]);

If I run sp_helptext on that function, it reminds me of that Andy Mallon (Blog | Twitter) post.

• Stop using sp_hexadecimal & sp_help_revlogin

It would be more performant if I stripped that function and used the code directly but the code is too handy to use for the infrequent times I need it.

PowerShell

I’ve talked before about using ConvertTo-SqlSelect in a blog post before and I still use that function alot!

Another short piece of code that I use is more for formatting than anything else. You can populate a variable with an array of properties names. Select-Object can use this variable to return information.

 $Properties = 'SqlInstance', @{Name = 'DatabaseName'; Expression = {$_.Name}}, 'Status', 'RecoveryModel', 'Owner'

Get-DbaDatabase -SqlInstance localhost -SqlCredential $Cred | Select $Properties

A useful snipper for reporting is to use a combination of Sort-Object and the Format-* commands with the -GroupBy parameter.

Get-DbaDatabase -SqlInstance localhost -SqlCredential $Cred |
    Select $Properties |
    Sort-Object RecoveryModel |
    Format-Table -GroupBy RecoveryModel

Sin é

When I sit down and write this post, I realise that I don’t have a lot of handy scripts. Either I re-write things constantly (that’s likely), or I don’t know enough yet (also likely). I should fix that.