New Training: Working with Data in Powershell

In this 6-video skill, CBT Nuggets trainer Knox Hutchinson teaches you how to connect to, retrieve, and manipulate data from CSVs, Excel files, SQL Server, and JSON content. Watch this new Windows Server training.

Watch the full course: Programming Foundations with PowerShell 7

This training includes:

• 6 videos

• 27 minutes of training

You’ll learn these topics in this skill:

• Introducing Data Interaction with PowerShell

• Working with CSVs

• Working with Excel Files

• Querying SQL Server

• Working with JSON

• Summarizing PowerShell Data Automation Tasks

How to Pipe Structured Data with PowerShell

All shell environments can be used to automate tasks. That is one of the best reasons to use a command-line environment. One of the powerful features all command-line environments offer is the ability to pipe data between applications. That means system administrators can automate a way for one application to process data and pass its results to another application for additional processing. PowerShell takes this a step further, though.

Traditionally, shell environments will pipe information as a blob of data. It is not 'organized' per se. It's simply a string of stuff. PowerShell, on the other hand, can handle and pipe structured data.

Structured data is extremely important in the programming world. It is the core of object-oriented programming. Structured data is what is used to create 'objects'. Likewise, structured data is the fundamental idea in which JSON is designed to be used.

By utilizing structured data, PowerShell can not only communicate and pipe data through various applications but other scripts created by powerful programming languages like Python. That makes PowerShell more extensible and powerful than other command-line environments. If you utilize PowerShell, you need to understand how it handles structured data.