Working with the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (part 8)

3. cmdlets for SharePoint Foundation 2010

SharePoint Foundation 2010 contains over 240 SharePoint-related cmdlets. The exact number can be found by typing the following command.

@(Get-Command -PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell").count

The most common objects that these cmdlets manipulate are the SPSite, SPServer, SPWeb, SPBusinessDataCatalogue, and SPConfigurationDatabase objects. Because Windows PowerShell is mainly an administrator’s tool, and these are the components an administrator manages, this spread of cmdlet is not unexpected. These cmdlets also can be found in SharePoint 2010, which is built on top of SharePoint Foundation.

Note:

ON THE COMPANION MEDIA The document “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Cmdlet Reference” is included on this book’s companion media. This document contains the output that you would see if you typed the following command in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.

PS C:\Users\Peter>Get-Command -PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell |
>>Sort Noun, Verb | Get-Help -detailed > CmdletHelp.txt
>><ENTER>

This command generates a list of cmdlet Help topics that is sorted by noun. This list contains the same Help for each cmdlet that you can view in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell by typing the following command.

Get-Help <Cmdlet-Name> -detailed

The document contains help information that was current at the time that the document was produced. Microsoft recommends that you always check the online help to find the latest information and examples. You can find the link to the online version in the Related Links section when you use the Get-Help command.

4. cmdlets for SharePoint 2010

If you use the same Windows PowerShell command shown in the previous section to determine the number of cmdlets available in SharePoint 2010, you will find that there are more than 530 SharePoint-related cmdlets associated with SharePoint 2010. Specifically, that is the number of cmdlets associated with a full install of the Enterprise Edition of SharePoint 2010 without FAST Search installed. To identify the additional cmdlets that SharePoint provides, Windows PowerShell can help again. On a computer with both SharePoint Foundation and a version of SharePoint Server installed, type the following command, changing the name of the redirect file name to reflect the SharePoint installation.

PS C:\users\peter>Get-Command -PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell" |
>> Sort noun, verb |group -Property noun -NoElement > cmdlet_sps.txt
>><Enter>

Copy the files to the same server and then type the following command.

PS C:\Users\Peter>Compare-Object -ReferenceObject $(Get-Content .\cmdlet_sps.txt) '
>>-DifferenceObject $(Get-Content .\cmdlet_spf.txt)
>><ENTER>

					  

You will see output similar to the following example.

InputObject                                                 SideIndicator
-----------                                                 -------------
    8 SPContentDatabase                                     =>
    3 PluggableSecurityTrimmer                              <=
    3 SPAccessServiceApplica...                             <=
    9 SPContentDatabase                                     <=
    5 SPContentDeploymentJob                                <=
    4 SPContentDeploymentPath                               <=
    4 SPDataConnectionFile                                  <=
    1 SPDataConnectionFileDe...                             <=
    2 SPEnterpriseSearchAdmi...                             <=
    3 SPEnterpriseSearchLang...                             <=
    4 SPEnterpriseSearchMeta...                             <=
...

Only those objects that do not appear on both installations, and those for which the count of the number of cmdlets per object is different, will appear in this list. The SideIndicator column indicates from which file the object with its cmdlet count came.

In SharePoint 2010, the most common objects that are manipulated by cmdlets are similar to those in SharePoint Foundation. However, the main additional commands available in SharePoint 2010 are the 131 cmdlets that help you manage the search process. (There are only four cmdlets associated with searches for SharePoint Foundation). Type the following command to check this for yourself.

PS C:\Users\Peter>@(gcm -PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell" |
>>where {$_.name -like "*search*"}).count
>><ENTER>

SharePoint 2010 contains more application services than SharePoint Foundation, such as Excel Services, InfoPath Services, Secure Storage, State Service, Microsoft Visio, and PerformancePoint. Therefore, on a SharePoint Server farm, there are more cmdlets that you can use to create, manipulate, and delete application service objects.