Tag Archives: dbatoolsMoL

My current VS Code Extensions and using a workspace file

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I have been asked a couple of times recently what my Visual Studio Code extensions are at the moment so I thought I would write a quick post and also look at workspaces and how you can enable and disable extensions within them

Listing Extensions

From the command line you can list your extensions using

code --list-extensions
code-insiders --list-extensions

My list looks like this

You can also see them in the view on the left of default Visual Studio Code and open them with CTRL + SHIFT + X (unless like me you have Snaggit installed and it has taken that shortcut

Installing Extensions

You can install extensions by opening the Extensions view in Visual Studio Code and searching for the extension. The list I have below has the precise names for each extension which you can use to search

You can also install extensions from the command-line with

code --install-extension <extensionid>
code-insiders --install-extension <extensionid>

My Extensions

I am going to list these in alphabetical order by display name for ease (my ease that is!)

Because Chrissy LeMaire and I are writing dbatools in a Month of Lunches using AsciiDoc, it makes sense to have an extension enabling previewing and syntax, you can find it here

For interacting with Azure I use the Azure Account Extension – ms-vscode.azure-account

I use Azure CLI so I make use of the functionality of the Azure CLI Tools extension ms-vscode.azurecli

For interacting with Azure Repos I use the ms-vsts.team extension

When creating ARM templates, this extension is very useful msazurermtools.azurerm-vscode-tools

I have a few theme extensions, this one is for fun in demos 😉 beardedbear.beardedtheme

The blackboard theme is my default one gerane.theme-blackboard

Chasing closing brackets is much easier with the Bracket Pair Colorixer, I use the beta version coenraads.bracket-pair-colorizer-2

I am rubbish at spelling and typing so I use this to help point out the issues! streetsidesoftware.code-spell-checker

Using the Docker extension adds another view to Visual Studio Code to ease working with containers ms-azuretools.vscode-docker

As an open-source project maintainer it is good to be able to work with GitHub pull requests without leaving Visual Studio Code github.vscode-pull-request-githubPreview

GitLens is absolutely invaluable when working with source control. It has so many features. This is an absolute must eamodio.gitlens

Working with Kubernetes? This extension adds another view for interacting with your cluster ms-kubernetes-tools.vscode-kubernetes-tools

Visual Studio Live Share enables you to collaborate in real-time in Visual Studio Code with your colleagues or friends. I blogged about this here ms-vsliveshare.vsliveshare

I love writing markdown and this linter assists me to ensure that my markdown is correct davidanson.vscode-markdownlint

The Material Icon Theme ensures that there are pretty icons in my editor! pkief.material-icon-theme

I have both the PowerShell extension ms-vscode.powershell and the PowerShell preview extension ms-vscode.powershell-preview installed but only one can be enabled at a time

This suite of extensions enables easy remote development so that you can develop your PowerShell scripts, for example, inside a ubuntu container running PowerShell 7 or inside Windows Subsystem for LInux ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpackPreview

Writing for cross-platform means looking out for line endings and this extension will display them and any whitespace in your editor medo64.render-crlf

An absolutely essential extension which enables me to backup all of my Visual Studio Code settings, shortcuts, extensions into a GitHub gist and keep all of my machines feeling the same. shan.code-settings-sync

For working with SQL Server within Visual Studio Code and having a view for my instances as well as a linter and intellisense I use ms-mssql.mssql

Yaml files and spaces! I no longer get so confused with this extension to help me 🙂 redhat.vscode-yaml

Workspaces

Now that is a lot of extensions and I dont need all of them everytime. I use workspaces to help with this. I will create a workspace file for the project I am working on.

I open or create the folders I will be working on and then click File and Save Workspace As and save the file in the root of the folder.

Now, the next time I want to open the workspace, I can open the workspace file or if I open the folder Visual Studio Code will helpfully prompt me

Now I can have all of my settings retained for that workspace

For this folder, I am ensuring that the PowerShell extension uses the PSScriptAnalyzer Settings file that I have created so that it will show if the code is compatible with the versions of PowerShell I have chosen. I can define settings for a workspace in the settings file, which you can open using CTRL and ,

But I can also enable or disable extensions for a workspace

So everytime I open this workspace I am only loading the extensions I want

PowerShell in SQL Notebooks in Azure Data Studio

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I have done a lot of writing in the last few months but you see no blog posts! My wonderful friend Chrissy and I are writing “dbatools in a Month of Lunches” to be published by Manning. That has taken up a lot of my writing mojo. We have hit a little break whilst we have some reviews done ready for the MEAP (For everyone who asks, the answer is the unfulfilling ‘soon’) so it’s time for a blog post!

SQL Notebooks are cool

I have had a lot of fun with SQL Notebooks recently. I have presented a session about them at a couple of events this month DataGrillen and SQL Saturday Cork. Here is a little snippet

Yes, you can run PowerShell in a SQL Notebook in Azure Data Studio just by clicking a link in the markdown cell. This opens up a lot of excellent possibilities.

I have had several discussions about how SQL Notebooks can be used by SQL DBAs within their normal everyday roles. (Mainly because I don’t really understand what the sorcerers of data science do with notebooks!). I have helped clients to look at some of their processes and use SQL Notebooks to help with them. Creating Disaster Recovery or Change Run-books or Incident Response Templates or using them for product demonstrations. Of course, I needed to use PowerShell in that 🙂

I have really enjoyed working out how to run PowerShell in the markdown in a SQL Notebook in Azure Data Studio and I think Anthony the kubernetes magician did too!

OK enough magic puns lets talk about PowerShell in SQL Notebooks. You can read about how to create a SQL Notebook and run T-SQL queries here, (you no longer need the Insider Edition by the way)

PowerShell in Markdown!

First, before I go any further, I must say this. I was at the European PowerShell Conference when I was working this out and creating my sessions and I said the words

“Cool, I can click a link and run PowerShell, this is neat”

A Beardy fellow in Hannover

This stopped some red team friends of mine in their tracks and they said “Show me”. One of them was rubbing their hands with glee! You can imagine the sort of wicked, devious things that they were immediately considering doing.

Yes, it’s funny but also it carries a serious warning. Without understanding what it is doing, please don’t enable PowerShell to be run in a SQL Notebook that someone sent you in an email or you find on a GitHub. In the same way as you don’t open the word document attachment which will get a thousand million trillion pounddollars into your bank account or run code you copy from the internet on production without understanding what it does, this could be a very dangerous thing to do.

With that warning out of the way, there are loads of really useful and fantastic use cases for this. SQL Notebooks make great run-books or incident response recorders and PowerShell is an obvious tool for this. (If only we could save the PowerShell output in a SQL Notebook, this would be even better)

How on earth did you work this out?

Someone asked me how I worked it out. I didn’t! It began with Vicky Harp PM lead for the SQL Tools team at Microsoft

I then went and looked at Kevin Cunnane‘s notebook. Kevin is a member of the tools team working on Azure Data Studio. With SQL Notebooks, you can double click the markdown cell and see the code that is behind it. To understand how it is working, lets deviate a little.

Keyboard Shortcuts

IF you click the cog at the bottom left of Azure Data Studio and choose Keyboard Shortcuts

you can make Azure Data Studio (and Visual Studio Code) work exactly how you want it to. Typing in the top box will find a command and you can then set the shortcuts that you want to use to save yourself time.

This also enables you to see the command that is called when you use a keyboard shortcut. For example, you can see that for the focus terminal command it says workbench.action.terminal.focus.

It turns out that you can call this as a link in a Markdown document using HTML with <a href=""> and adding command: prior to the command text. When the link is clicked the command will run. Cool 🙂

For this to be able to work (you read the warning above?) you need to set the Notebook to be trusted by clicking this button.

This will allow any command to be run. Of course, people with beards will helpfully advise when this is required for a SQL Notebook. (Safe to say people attempting nefarious actions will try the same with your users)

Now that we know how to run an Azure Data Studio command using a link in a markdown cell the next step is to run a PowerShell command. I headed to the Visual Studio Code documentation and found

Send text from a keybinding
The workbench.action.terminal.sendSequence command can be used to send a specific sequence of text to the terminal, including escape sequence

That’s the command we need, however, we still need to craft the command so that it will work as a link. It needs to be converted into a URL.

I started by using this website https://www.url-encode-decode.com/ to do this. This is how you can check the code in other peoples notebook, use the decode capability.

Encoding Set-Location C:\dbachecks gives Set-Location+C%3A%5Cdbacheck`

So I can just put that code into the href link and bingo!

If only it was that easy!!

Some Replacing is required

The + needs to be replaced with a space or %20

You also need to double the \ and replace the %3A with a :
The " needs to be replaced with \u022, the ' with \u027, the curly braces won’t work unless you remove the %0D%0A. Got all that? Good!

Once you have written your PowerShell, encoded it, performed the replacements, you add \u000D at the end of the code to pass an enter to run the code and then place all of that into a link like this

<a href="command:workbench.action.terminal.sendSequence?%7B%22text%22%3A%22 PLACE THE ENCODED CODE HERE %22%7D">Link Text</a>

This means that if you want to add the PowerShell code to set a location and then list the files and folders in that location to a Markdown cell using PowerShell like this

Set-Location C:\dbachecks
Get-ChildItem

You would end up with a link like this

<a href="command:workbench.action.terminal.sendSequence?%7B%22text%22%3A%22 Set-Location C:%5C%5Cdbachecks \u000D Get-ChildItem \u000D %22%7D">Set Location and list files</a>

Doing something more than once?

I don’t want to remember that all of the time so I wrote a PowerShell function. You can find it on GitHub https://github.com/SQLDBAWithABeard/Functions/blob/master/Convert-ADSPowerShellForMarkdown.ps1

This will take a PowerShell command and turn it into a link that will work in an Azure Data Studio markdown. It’s not magic, it’s PowerShell. There is a –ToClipboard parameter which will copy the code to the clipboard ready for you to paste into the cell (On Windows machines only)

Giants

There are many uses for this but here’s one I think is cool.

The link below will go to a notebook, which will show how you the giants upon whose shoulders I stand

Glenn Berry,
Chrissy LeMaire,
André Kamman,
Gianluca Sartori

have enabled me to create a SQL Notebook with a link which will run some PowerShell to create a SQL Notebook which will have all of the Diagnostic Queries in it.

You could possibly use something like it for your incident response SQL Notebook.

It’s also cool that GitHub renders the notebook in a browser (You can’t run PowerShell or T-SQL from there though, you need Azure Data Studio!)

https://github.com/SQLDBAWithABeard/Presentations/blob/master/2019/Berlin%20SQL%20User%20Group/04%20-%20Glenn%20Berry%20Notebook.ipynb