Quite a common request for working with Windows machines is to report the software installed on them. If you don’t have a centralised system for reporting on client software (many places don’t) then you may turn to some form of scripted method to obtain this information. Most people tend to head to Add / Remove Programs when thinking about what software is installed in Windows. However, not all applications will always populate information in there, depending on how they have been installed. Additionally, to query that information you would typically query the WMI class Win32_Product, however this can lead to performance issues. Click here to be redirected to the original post of this article on the author’s blog site where you can read the remainder of the article.
Note that scorecards for the first event will not be accurate immediately on Sunday when judging closes; we have the scores in the database, but they’re not tagged in a way the system can find them. The bug has been fixed, but I need to go through and manually re-tag the first day’s scorecards, and it’s going to take a couple of days. This also affect the leaderboard display. I hope to have it fixed over the weekend. Thanks for your patience!
In This Episode
Tonight on the PowerScripting Podcast, we talk to Steve Roberts from Amazon on Amazon Web Services and PowerShell.
News
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[The Scripting Games](https://powershell.org/category/announcements/scripting-games/) are going on now!
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[PowerShell Saturday #007](http://powershellsaturday.com/007/) is on February 8th
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[PowerShell Saturday #008](http://powershellsaturday.com/008/) is on February 15th
Interview
Guest - Steve Roberts
Links
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[Amazon Web Services](http://aws.amazon.com/)
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[AWS Tools for PowerShell](http://aws.amazon.com/powershell/)
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AWS .Net / PowerShell team
[Windows & .Net Developer Center](http://aws.amazon.com/net/)
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[Blog](http://aws.amazon.com/net/)
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Twitter: [@awsfornet](https://twitter.com/awsfornet)
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[Handling credentials with PowerShell tools](http://blogs.aws.amazon.com/net/post/Tx36NATIEAMER5V/Handling-Credentials-with-AWS-Tools-for-Windows-PowerShell)
Chatroom Highlights:
[21:55:58] [http://amzn.com/1430264519](http://amzn.com/1430264519)
[21:56:13] Pro PowerShell for Amazon Web Services
[21:56:33] Steve (speaking) was a big help with the book
[21:56:43] his team was great
[https://powershell.org/community-events/summit/](https://powershell.org/community-events/summit/)
[http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughpad/us/7-inch-tablet-fz-m1.asp](http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughpad/us/7-inch-tablet-fz-m1.asp)
[http://aws.amazon.com/powershell/](http://aws.amazon.com/powershell/)
[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/latest/reference/Index.html](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/latest/reference/Index.html)
[http://aws.amazon.com/](http://aws.amazon.com/)
[http://amzn.com/1430264519](http://amzn.com/1430264519)
[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/latest/reference/Index.html](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/latest/reference/Index.html)
[http://aws.amazon.com/net/](http://aws.amazon.com/net/)
[http://blogs.aws.amazon.com/net](http://blogs.aws.amazon.com/net)
[http://www.musicradar.com/us/news/guitars/trent-reznor-talks-johnny-cash-168199](http://www.musicradar.com/us/news/guitars/trent-reznor-talks-johnny-cash-168199)
[https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1607005_10202465193703988_1046463679_n.jpg](https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1607005_10202465193703988_1046463679_n.jpg)
## what does AWS stand for again?
DexterPOSh, please add ## before your questions so they are easier for us to pick out
@JonWalz ...got it ##
## can you give a quick/small example of the differences between AWS and Azure?
## Can I extend my local Lab to include machines from AWS ?
## does he have a blog
Last year was the first annual PowerShell Saturday in Charlotte, NC. We were 002. This year, we are back and will be blowing minds in 007 style. We have some great speakers and sessions lined up and there are still tickets available.
The popular Iron Scripter! competition will also be back.
All of the information you could want to know about this event is located on the PowerShell Saturday site. Jump on over, take a look around, and don’t forget to register.
There are several concepts that come to mind when discussing the topic of designing your PowerShell commands for performance and efficiency, but in my opinion one of the items at the top of the list is “Filtering Left” which is what I’ll be covering in this blog article. First, let’s start out by taking a look at an example of a simple one-liner command that’s poorly written from a performance and efficiency standpoint: Click here to be redirected to the original post of this article on the author’s blog site where you can read the remainder of the article. µ
Lido Paglia gave a presentation entitled “A PowerShell beginner’s guide to using GitHub”. During his talk Lido went over the history of GitHub and how you can use it to manage your scripts and to collaboratively code (e.g. The Winter Scripting games!). A copy of his presentation materials are available on our GitHub Repository.
Adding and removing Items from a PowerShell array is a topic which can lead to some confusion, so here are a few tips for you. Create an array and we will note the type System.Array: Click here to be redirected to the original post of this article on the author’s blog site where you can read the remainder of the article.
Sometimes when running a PowerShell script you may need to test at the beginning whether the process it was called from had Windows admin privileges in order to be able to achieve what it needs to do. Prior to PowerShell v4 I had used something along the lines of the following to test for this condition – not the most obvious piece of code ever to be fair: Click here to be redirected to the original post of this article on the author’s blog site where you can read the remainder of the article.
In Version 2 of PowerShell, you had the ability to use #Requires –Version 2.0 to ensure that your scripts/functions would only run at a specified PowerShell version to prevent folks running an older version from wondering why things weren’t working that well. In this article, I will show you a couple of new additions to the #Requires statement that will make your life easier when writing functions that require specific pre-requisites rather than coding your own methods Click here to be redirected to the original post of this article on the author’s blog site where you can read the remainder of the article..
I’ve testing out the judging system using the practice event and one thing jumped out at me. It was a lot easier to understand the entries for those teams that included a transcript of their entry. I would very strongly recommend that you include a transcript of your entry running. As a minimum I would recommend that you include:
the solution running - show each type of input required by the scenario (pipeline, single values, file etc)
if parameter validation is asked for - show that in action
show error handling in action if you can
show the partial contents of any output file Transcripts make for happy judges. You want your judges to be happy don’t you…
