Why isn’t .Contains() working in Powershell?

I’m building a little app that is driven by an XML configuration file. I need to substitute variables from the XML with a random name or a keyword from another source, so I used $Keyword and $MaleName and $FemaleName. Look at this code, and see if you can spot the bug. Every single text field […]

Read MSMQ from Powershell

<pre> [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Messaging") cls $queueName = '.\Private$\NealTest' $queue = new-object System.Messaging.MessageQueue $queueName $utf8  = new-object System.Text.UTF8Encoding $msgs = $queue.GetAllMessages() write-host "Number of messages=$($msgs.Length)" foreach ($msg in $msgs)   {       write-host $msg_.Id       write-host $utf8.GetString($msg.BodyStream.ToArray())   } </pre> Depending on how many times you wrote messages to the queue, the output will look something like this:

Write to MSMQ from Powershell (And View in Server Manager)

First make sure MMSQ is installed, and then for now, manually create your queue using the Server Manager MMC (Microsoft Management Console) GUI (Graphical User Interface). Perhaps in an upcoming blog I will demonstrate the creation of the queue itself in Powershell. NOTE: MSMQ can only hold messages up to 4MB! Select whether you want […]

Should BizTalk Admins be granted SysAdmin Authority in the BizTalk/SQL database?

The question today:  Should BizTalk Administrators be granted/given the “SysAdmin” role (authority) in the SQL database that supports BizTalk. Generally, my answer is yes (at least on the BizTalk machine that is running SQL to support BizTalk, and here’s why. 1) The BizTalk Admins typically have to deal with the SQL Agent Jobs.  BizTalk installs […]

HelpNDoc – a tool for building various types of Help Files

This looks like a great tool for building an HTML based Help system:  http://www.helpndoc.com I discovered it when looking at the new help for BTDF (BizTalk Deployment Framework), and wanted to shared it with you, and file it away in case I need it in the future.   It’s free for personal use, but I […]

Introduction to ToirtoseSVN (Subversion Source Control)

Subversion is a popular open-source source control system.  In my last blog “Intro to SVN“, I gave some examples of how the SlikSVN commands work from the Windows Command Line.  ToirtoseSVN is a window shell menu and GUI for SVN.  After installing TortoiseSVN, you simply right-click on the file or directory, and the TortoiseSVN command […]

My first look at SVN command-line (with SlikSVN) | Introduction to SVN

My client uses SVN (Subversion) instead of TFS; so something new to learn. In the past, I have had clients that used AccuRev and Borland’s StarTeam. So it would seem that 20% or more of my clients have not used TFS for source control. I downloaded SlikSVN from https://sliksvn.com/download/, and used the free doc here […]

BizTalk 2010+ – Powershell Script using Powershell Extensions to Create Hosts and HostInstances

I’m at a new client, and here’s the scenario.  They have good Hosts and Host Instances set up in production, and maybe the QA environment (I don’t have access yet).  But in the development environment, they have been using the default host instances.  I still can’t imagine how they did their binding files correctly.  One […]

Scraping Test Data from the Web – List of Cities for a State – Using RegEx and NotePad++

First, I found data on Wikipedia. It was formatted into columns, but I had inutition that in the HTML behind the page, the data would not be in columns, that was just formatting, and I was right. This is the page that I started with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Texas. I did right-click “View source” then copied the HTML […]

A First Look at Oracle and “PL/SQL Developer” for Microsoft SQL Developers

For whatever reason, I have escaped using any Oracle database in my 30+ year IT Consulting career, and now at my new client, I’m finally using it, at least to run simple queries. As a BizTalk developer, so much depends on the client. I have worked with clients that call MSSQL Stored Procs from BizTalk, […]