I often have to go onsite and go through a customers' eventlogs looking for errors. While the eventvwr does provide for nice filtering it doesn't allow me to sort. I like to use Excel for sorting and making a nice table format. In order to do this however I need to be able to format the eventlogs output in a nice delimited format. Powershell provides the ability (ConvertTo-CSV & Export_CSV) to pipe data out to a CSV file however it 'keeps' the carriage returns and line feeds so that ultimately my delimited csv is a mess when I import it into Excel.

I created the following Powershell script to help me collect x number of days worth of data and have it exported nicely to delimited format.

<#

Required data

$logPath : which folder to write the collected data to, may also be in the format "\\fileshare"

$computers : semi-colon delimited list of computers to retreive logs for

$days : how many days worth of logs to collect

#>

$logPath = "C:\Temp" # "\\fileshare"
$log = "Application;System"
$computers = "CNTSQL"
$days = 5

$date = get-date -format M.d.yyyy
$now = get-date
$subtractDays = New-Object System.TimeSpan $days,0,0,0,0
$then = $Now.Subtract($subtractDays)
# Error,Information,FailureAudit,SuccessAudit,Warning
[string] $logName = ""
[string] $eventID = ""
[string] $MachineName = ""
[string] $entryTime = ""
[string] $message = ""
[string] $source = ""
[string] $timeGenerated = ""
[string] $fullentry = ""

Function ExecutePerComputer
{ param ([string] $computers)
# a list of servers for the eventlog collection in semi-colon delimited list
#$compArray
$compArray = $computers.Split(";")
[string] $c = ""
foreach ($c in $compArray)
{
# call GetLog with the servername and the logs to get
Write-Host $c
GetLog $c $log
}
}
Function GetLog
{ param ([string] $server, [string] $logs)
# a list of the logs to return
#$logArray
$logArray = $logs.Split(";")
[string] $l = ""
foreach ($l in $logArray)
{
$systemErrors = Get-EventLog -Computername $server -LogName $l -After $then -Before $now -EntryType Error | select LogName,EventID,MachineName,EntryType,Message,Source,TimeGenerated
#Write-Host $l
foreach ($obj in $systemErrors)
{
$logName = $l
$eventID = $obj.EventID.ToString()
$MachineName = $obj.MachineName
$entryTime = $obj.EntryType
$message = $obj.Message.Replace("`r`n", ",").Replace("`n", ",").Replace("`r", ",")
$source = $obj.Source
$timeGenerated = $obj.TimeGenerated.ToString()

$fullentry = $logName + ";" + $eventID + ";" + $MachineName + ";" + $entryTime + ";" + $message + ";" + $source + ";" + $timeGenerated

WriteToCSV "$logPath\$computers-$log-$date.csv" $fullentry
}
}
}
Function WriteToCSV
{ param ([string] $filePath, [string] $content)

$content | Out-File -FilePath $filePath -Append
}

$File = "LogName;EventID;MachineName;EntryType;Message;Source;TimeGenerated"
WriteToCSV "$logPath\$computers-$log-$date.csv" $File
ExecutePerComputer $computers

 Excelsior!

Norman

#$Instance = "SQLALL\NOGISQL2012"
$InstServiceName = "NOGISQL2012"
#$NodeName = "SQLALL"

Function CreateXEventSession()
{
    # PATH  SQLSERVER:\XEvent\SQLALL\NOGISQL2012
   
    Set-Location SQLSERVER:\XEvent
    $h = hostname
    cd $h
    $store = dir | where {$_.DisplayName -ieq $InstServiceName}
    $session = new-object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.XEvent.Session -argumentlist $store, "TestSession"
    $event = $session.AddEvent("sqlserver.sql_statement_completed")
    $event.AddAction("sqlserver.sql_text")
    $session.AddTarget("package0.ring_buffer")
    $session.Create()
}

write-host "--<>------  start  ------<>--"
Import-Module -Name SQLPS
CreateXEventSession
write-host "--<>------  end  ------<>--"
# todo --> start the session

good luck and have fun,

Norman

The other day I was trying to clean up my harddrive and I wanted to find all the files with extension BLG. Once found I wanted to delete them all. The search tool could find no files of that type at all. I was using the *.blg wildcard.

Solution:

1. select the folder in the windows explorer
2. hit the ALT key which should bring up the TOOLS menu
3. select Tools > Folder Options
4. a pop-up window appears with 3 tabs
5. select the SEARCH tab
6. selec the option "Always search file names and contents (this might take several minutes)

Your searches will now be slower but yes you will be able to find what your are looking for. I can't quite figure out what the point of having a search solution that is fast but can't anything!

gr,

Norman

I hit an interesting undocumented hidden feature when using DSInit to set up the storage emulator database for my VS2010 projects.The documentation assumes that you have installed SQLExpress and indeed if you have the setup of the emulator will work fine. What however if you have your own SQL Server instance running? What if that instance is a named instance and not a default instance?  As I found the creation will fail.

The command line that should work is: > DSInit /sqlinstance:myinstance /user:domain\user /forcecreate

when: myinstance is in the format of <server>\<instance> the creation will fail.

the solution is to use only the <instance> name thus instead of > DSInit /sqlinstance:<server>\<instance>     USE     > DSInit /sqlinstance:<instance>

Don't forget to run the command prompt as administrator and you can use /user:domain\user /forcecreate as required.

Tutorial: Creating a Windows Azure Hello World Application Using ASP.NET MVC 3: https://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/learn/tutorials/getting-started-web-tutorial/

Tutorial: Deploying a Windows Azure Sample Application: https://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/learn/tutorials/deploy-tutorial/

What happens if the original developers/DBAs leave and there is no documentation? How can we find out which objects are being executed at startup? I recently had this question so I thought I would post the answer here as it is interesting.

SELECT ObjectProperty(object_id,'ExecIsStartup'),*

FROM sys.objects

WHERE TYPE IN('X','P','PC')

AND ObjectProperty(object_id,'ExecIsStartup') = 1

regards,

Norman

You can deploy a CLR project to SQL Server 2008 R2 with Visual Studio 2010 however do not forget to set the target .Net version to 3.5. The default for VS 2010 is .Net 4.0 and this will cause a deploy error, (fails to deploy). I lost a some time fiddling with this before I was able to get it to work.

gr,

Norman

According to Microsoft:
On January 27th, we have deployed Profile Integration to the MSDN & TechNet Blogs (https://blogs.msdn.com/b/help/archive/2011/01/21/integration-of-msdn-blog-user-account-with-msdn-forums-profile.aspx ).  This is part of the larger STO Profile integration, which consolidate our users profile suites down to a single instance which will be used across all STO community platforms.

regards,
Norman

Writing Message Content
Trace and debug messages are also useful for writing out the contents of messages and orchestration variables. This is useful for inspecting intermediate messages produced by multiple transforms and for determining the values of other transient values.

The first step is to add the appropriate variable declarations to the orchestration:

• stringMessage of type string
• xmlMessage of type System.Xml.XmlDocument
• myMessage is the orchestration message whose contents are to be output

After these variables have been declared, add the following code to an Expression shape in your orchestration:

xmlMessage = myMessage;
stringMessage = xmlMessage.OuterXml;
System.Diagnostics.EventLog.WriteEntry("MyBizTalkLogEntry", stringMessage);

The is handy perhaps for you Dev environment but very dangerous for production. 

For more debugging tips please refer to: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc825581(BTS.10).aspx

The tool can be downloaded here: https://biztalkdocumenter.codeplex.com/

If you have a 64bit environment then it will most likely not work for you. You can get around this by running with 32bit Coreflags on. You will need to have either the Win 2k? SDK installed or Visual Studio. Then you open a command prompt and execute the following: coreflags.exe Microsoft.Services.Tools.BiztalkDocumenter.exe /force /32Bit +

Happy documentoring!    ;-p