Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[3.0.0] - 2025-02-18

Changed

This is an experimental branch and you can’t just switch to it easily. I’d recommend sticking with 2.2.2.

• Switches from System.Data to Microsoft.Data libraries.
• Get-DbData -InfoMessageVariable is now of type System.Collections.Generic.List[object]
• Get-DbData does not override Open() on connections by default as it shouldn’t be necessary anymore.
• New-DbConnection doesn’t default to Integrated Security anymore. You must start specifying the -Authentication method.
• New-DbConnection allows Microsoft Entra ID authentication to Azure systems.

Fixed

• Use-DbRetry had a lot of problems which should be gone now.

[2.2.2] - 2019-09-20

Fixed

• Get-DbSmo can throw an error when setting default fields even before a connection has been established, I think because it can retrieve a bad connection from the pool. So in this version I’ve moved that bit of code into the retry block.

[2.2.1] - 2019-09-13

Fixed

• New-DbConnection.

[2.2.0] - 2019-09-13

Fixed

• I discovered SMO doesn’t allow connection pooling if you pass in your own connection object. It leaves those connections dangling which is dangerous. Get-DbSmo has changed to disallow a ConnectionString (as it would now be pointless). It still allows a SqlConnection to be passed in and this is used to allow SMO to construct its own connection. If you really really want SMO to use a connection object of your own then you can use the new -Raw parameter. Good luck.
• Work around more preload bugs in SMO for Managed Instances.

[2.1.9] - 2019-08-30

Fixed

• Support for running the Alter command within constrained endpoints.

[2.1.8] - 2019-08-30

Added

• DatabaseName can now be passed into New-DbConnection as a property.

[2.1.7] - 2019-07-23

Fixed

• Default RetryCount of 3 on Use-DbRetry instead of just Get-DbSmo.
• Stop clobbering values, hopefully.

[2.1.6] - 2019-07-22

Issues

• Using nested Use-DbRetry seems to clobber variables.

Added

• Get-DbData and New-DbBulkCopy can take -RetryCount and -RetrySeconds parameters.

Changed

• Use-DbRetry parameters changed from $Count to $RetryCount and from $Seconds to $RetrySeconds. It makes sense to have the same names as what will decorate most of the other functions.
• Remove a dependency on the Error module. It’s not longer needed as we don’t test for specific errors.

Fixed

• More throws replaced with Write-Error -Exception.

[2.1.5] - 2019-07-22

Fixed

• Make tests pass.

[2.1.4] - 2019-07-22

Changed

• Get-DbSmo now defaults to a -RetryCount of 3 again if no RetryCount or RetrySeconds is provided. So this is like pre-2.1.0 behavior.

[2.1.3] - 2019-07-22

Changed

• Use-DbRetry now supports -Count (a number of retries in addition to the first try), or -Seconds, or both (whichever is hit first).
• Get-DbSmo doesn’t retry automatically now, but accepts a -RetryCount and -RetrySeconds parameters.

[2.1.2] - 2019-07-22

Changed

• If a username/password is supplied for SQL authentication then we convert it to a SqlCredential now. The only time this isn’t done is when you use the -AsString switch to get a connection string.

[2.1.1] - 2019-07-22

Changed

• Use-DbRetry sleeps are up to 3s long to start with. This gives ~15 retries per 3 minutes.

[2.1.0] - 2019-07-22

Changed

• Use-DbRetry now has a -Seconds parameter rather than a -Tries count. It defaults to 3 minutes.
• Use-DbRetry is now less smart and will catch all exceptions. It’s probably better this way.

[2.0.8] - 2019-07-06

Fixed

• Get-DbData return as PSCustomObject will retain column order now.

[2.0.7] - 2019-06-18

Fixed

• Remove Get-DbWmi reference to LoadWithPartialName bringing up wrong SMO DLL.

[2.0.6] - 2019-06-18

Fixed

• Added aliases for constrained endpoint compatibility.

[2.0.5] - 2019-05-20

Fixed

• PSObject types were returning $True BIT fields as NULL. Who knew $true -eq [DBNull]::Value? Switched to -is [DBNull].

[2.0.4] - 2019-05-20

Fixed

• SMO warning was not working.

[2.0.3] - 2019-05-20

Fixed

• Get-DbData won’t fail on CREATE PROCEDURE statements anymore. It seems if you use AddWithKey on these with .NET it fails. Now it only sets it if it’s trying to get the schema for -Alter, and even then if that fails it will set it back to Add instead.

[2.0.2] - 2019-05-17

Fixed

• Removed direct references to the SMO DLL. This prevents old ones from being loaded from the GAC and causing issues that are hard to trace.
• Add a warning if SMO DLLs are detected other than those loaded by the SqlServer module.

[2.0.1] - 2019-05-17

Fixed

• Remove string type from Get-DbSmo SqlCredential that shouldn’t have been there.
• Re-introduced SqlServer as a dependency. This forces it to load first. I found lots of issues where Get-DbSmo can be used without SqlServer being loaded and thus picking up incorrect GAC SMO DLLs, which then causes later uses of SqlServer functions not fail in mysterious ways.

[2.0.0] - 2019-04-18

This has real breaking changes.

Changed

• PSCustomObject types are returned by default instead of DataRow.
• Alter functions are no longer added by default.
• Get-DbData parameter CollectionJoin renamed AlterCollectionSeparator.

Added

• Get-DbData can output as PSCustomObject.
• Get-DbData parameter Alter. This performs the Schema and CommandBuilder phases, and adds the Alter function. This can only be used with OutputAs DataTable and DataSet.

Removed

• Get-DbData parameters NoSchema and NoCommandBuilder.

[1.6.0] - 2019-04-18

Changed

• Improve module load time.

Fixed

• Changelog syntax passes VS Code markdown linter.

[1.5.8] - 2019-04-03

Added

• Get-DbSmo can now accept a SqlCredential when used with a server name.

[1.5.7] - 2018-10-30

Changes

• Internal structure and documentation. Version bump for PowerShell Gallery.

[1.5.6] - 2018-10-14

Fixed

• New-DbCommand CommandTimeout of 0 was timing out. It should not have timed out.

[1.5.5] - 2018-09-10

Fixed

• Files converted to BOM-less TAB-less UTF-8.

[1.5.4] - 2018-03-08

Fixed

• New-DbConnection now properly parses input parameters. Previously it wanted strings but would silently accept bools and occasionally not set them due to the way it checks the value rather than $PSBoundParameters. Now all possible input get set accordingly whether “True”, “False”, $True, or $False.

[1.5.3] - 2018-03-01

Fixed

• Get-DbData now throws the proper exception object as a parameter to Write-Error. Before it was just doing a Write-Error and so the exception was not properly testable by code like Use-DbRetry.

[1.5.2] - 2018-02-28

Changed

• New-DbCommand no longer accepts a connection string directly. Send it a SqlConnection object from New-DbConnectionString instead.
• Get-DbData now does a Write-Error of exceptions instead of throwing the raw exception. This allows you to finish faulty pipelines with -ErrorAction Continue.

[1.5.1] - 2018-02-27

Added

• VS Code workspace.
• Extensive AppVeyor testing.
• New-DbConnection now accepts pipeline input and a -ConnectionString parameter, so you can base one connection string on modifications of another.

Changed

• Get-DbData parameters renamed from -OutputAs DataRows/DataTables to the singular form DataRow/DataTable.
• New-DbConnection now uses the Add-DbOpen function on any connections, so when it is opened from anywhere in the stack it can use async open by default.

[1.0.8] - 2018-02-20

Fixed

• Typo in Use-DbRetry.

[1.0.7] - 2018-02-16

Added

• New-DbConnection now allows the use of a SqlCredential (the secure kind, as well as the traditional kind), and as a PSCredential too - which it will convert.

Changed

• Get-DbSmo now uses Version property to detect if it has successfully connected to SMO instead of ComputerNamePhysicalNetBIOS because the latter may not appear on some versions of SQL Server. This check is required because SMO connections can return but have silently failed.

• Use-DbRetry output through Write-Host changed back to Write-Verbose because it was becoming annoying.

[1.0.6] - 2018-02-05

Added

• Get-DbSmo now accepts pipeline input of the server instance, connection string, or SqlConnection object.

[1.0.4] - 2017-11-08

Added

• Add-DbOpen function replaces a SqlConnection’s Open() function with a version that does an Async open and wait. This is because I observed SQL able to hang a connection and never timeout properly using Open, and OpenAsync plus wait resolves that.
• Get-DbSmo now does retries and uses Add-DbOpen.

Changed

• Use-DbRetry now outputs retries with Write-Host instead of Write-Verbose because it was hard to pick up.

• Use-DbRetry now does better back-off waits on retries.

Fixed

• Get-DbData .Alter() blocks don’t update $null unnecessarily anymore.
• New-DbConnection -SqlCredential now applies a Credential to the right place in the connection string.
• Get-DbWmi loads the correct SMO DLL now.
• Exit-DbTransaction Rollback logic improved.
• Fast loading of module outside of ISE done with Invoke-Expression ([System.IO.File]::ReadAllText()) reverted as it was unreliable and caused a lot of runspace hangs.

[1.0.4] - 2017-02-27

Added

• New-DbConnection now has an -Open parameter to open the connection before returning to the caller. This is to avoid having to constantly make a connection, open it, and then pass it to something else.

Fixed

• Get-DbSmo and Get-DbWmi now load SMO assemblies in case they aren’t loaded already.
• Module had a missing dependency on Disposable module, which has been added.
• Dependency on SQLPS module removed by testing for policy evaluation exception by type name rather than by type.

[1.0.3] - 2017-02-22

Added

• Get-DbData can now use -As as an alias for -OutputAs.

Fixed

• Varbinary now gets written correctly.

[1.0.2] - 2017-02-18

Added

• Get-DbData now takes a -CollectionJoin parameter. Often you want to pass in an array of strings or something to a field and update it, but without having to then convert the array of strings to a single string. Now you don’t have to - just pass in a -CollectionJoin and arrays will be joined with the parameter’s value before being written to the database.

[1.0.1] - 2017-02-17

Added

• Get-DbSmo function to get an SMO object but with a complete preload.
• Get-DbWmi function to get a ManagedComputer object.
• New-DbBulkCopy function to bulk copy a DataSet or DataTable to a database.
• New-DbConnection now takes all available ADO.NET connection properties!

Changed

• Use-DbRetry now retries on SQL policy exceptions as these are thrown often when evaluating policies concurrently.
• Documentation improvements.

[1.0.0] - 2016-10-17

Added

• Use-DbRetry function can wrap Get-DbData (or other) sections to do retries based on SQL failure error codes.
• New-DbConnection now accepts a -HostName parameter.
• GPLv3 license.

Changed

• DataSql module renamed to DbData.
• New-SqlConnectionString renamed to New-DbConnection.
• New-SqlCommand renamed to New-DbCommand. -Query and -QueryTimeout parameters renamed to -Command and -CommandTimeout. -Parameter input is now through a hashtable rather than a Name, Value array.
• Edit-SqlData renamed to Get-DbData.
• Enter-SqlTransaction renamed to Enter-DbTransaction.
• Exit-SqlTransaction renamed to Exit-DbTransaction.

Removed

• Functions Add-SqlDataTable, Get-SqlType, and Write-DataTable from Chad Miller.

[1.0.0-alpha1] - 2015-09-13

Added

• New-SqlCommand documentation.
• Function Enter-SqlTransaction begins a transaction and Exit-SqlTransaction commits or rolls back.
• Get-SqlDataSet and Get-SqlDataTable functions to return each of these types, by wrapping output from new functions Edit-SqlData.
• Functions Add-SqlDataTable, Get-SqlType, and Write-DataTable from Chad Miller.

Changed

• SqlHelper module renamed to DataSql.
• New-SqlCommand has an improved error handling for infoMessageVariable.
• New-SqlCommand parameter -QueryTimeout changed to -CommandTimeout.

[1.0.0-alpha0] - 2015-09-10

Added

• Initial release of SqlHelper module.
• Function New-SqlConnectionString builds a connection string.
• Function New-SqlCommand builds a command with proper parameters.