I mentioned PowerShell – the new Windows command shell and scripting language – last year when I first tried it out. But other than playing with it a little, I kind of put it to one side and forgot all about it.
Yesterday I picked it up again and started playing with it again – using it to develop functions for WebSphere MQ (accessing it through the .NET DLLs that come with WMQ). The idea was to start and produce something which expands on the command line administration tools that come with WMQ – adding features that perhaps we don’t already provide.
You can see a walkthrough of what I’ve come up with so far on a post I wrote for the Hursley WMQ blog, but I thought I’d quickly draw out some of the more interesting bits that I learnt in doing it.
(It’s worth pointing out that if you’ve come to this page from Google looking for PowerShell tips and best practice, that I’m very much a beginner. As I highlight in the WMQ post, this is the product of an evening’s playing around – pretty much just trial and error and seeing what tab-complete suggests. It seems to work, but whether it’s the best way to do it… dunno 🙂 )
This week saw a change at ECS House. To start with a little history, Eastleigh Community Services was where my charity, Solent Youth Action, started. We began as a project ran by ECS, and we’re still physically based in ECS House – renting some office space from them since we became independent. So even though we are now independent, we still watch what happens to ECS with interest. 