Get Help SQL Server PowerShell

Article
06/13/2017

There are several sources of information about using the SQL Server provider for Windows PowerShell and cmdlets. This includes the help that is available in the Windows PowerShell environment.

Before You Begin

To learn about Windows PowerShell, see Windows PowerShell Getting Started Guide.

For an overview of the SQL Server cmdlets and provider, see SQL Server PowerShell.

Help in the Windows PowerShell Environment

Use the Get-Help cmdlet to get help in the Windows PowerShell environment. Get-Help provides basic help for the Windows PowerShell language and the various cmdlets and providers available in Windows PowerShell.

For more information on the ways you can use Get-Help, see Get-Help: Getting Help.

SQL Server PowerShell Provider Help

The SQL Server PowerShell provider implements several folders on a SQLSERVER virtual drive, such as the SQLSERVER:\SQL and SQLSERVER:\DAC folders. Each folder is associated with one of the SQL Server manageability object models. While you can list the methods and properties associated with each node in a SQL Server path, you cannot get help for them in the PowerShell environment. For a table of the folders with links to the associated programming reference, see SQL Server PowerShell Provider.

Invoke-Sqlcmd Help

The Invoke-Sqlcmd cmdlet takes as input any query or script file that can be run by the sqlcmd utility. You can use Get-Help to get information about Invoke-Sqlcmd and its parameters, but there is no Get-Help coverage for the sqlcmd queries.

The -Query or -QueryFromFile input can contain:

sqlcmd variables and commands. For information about these variables and commands, see the Remarks section of sqlcmd Utility.
Transact-SQL statements. For more information about the Transact-SQL language, see Transact-SQL Reference (Database Engine).
XQuery statements. For more information about the XQuery language supported by SQL Server, see XQuery Language Reference (SQL Server).

Get Help for a SQL Server cmdlet

To get help for a cmdlet

Run Get-Help specifying the name of the cmdlet and the level of help to be returned.

Example: cmdlet Get-Help

The following examples return various levels of help for Invoke-Sqlcmd:

## Get the basic help.  
Get-Help Invoke-Sqlcmd  
  
## Get the full help.  
Get-Help Invoke-Sqlcmd -Full  
  
## Get the parameter descriptions.  
Get-Help Invoke-Sqlcmd -Parameter *  
  
## Get the code examples.  
Get-Help Invoke-Sqlcmd -Examples  
  
## Get the syntax diagram.  
Get-Help Invoke-Sqlcmd -Syntax

Get a List of Providers

To get a list of active providers

Run Get-Help specifying the provider category.

For more information about getting provider help in Windows PowerShell, see Drives and Providers.

Example: Get a List of Providers

This code returns a list of the providers currently enabled in your Windows PowerShell session:

Get-Help -Category provider

Get Help About the SQL Server Provider

To get help about the provider

Run Get-Help specifying the name SQLServer

Example: Get SQL Server Provider Help

This example returns basic information about the SQL Server provider:

Get-Help SQLServer

List Methods and Properties

To list the methods and properties for a node in a SQL Server provider path

Either CD to a node in the SQL Server path, or create a variable set to that location.
Run the Get-Member cmdlet with the -Type parameter set to either Methods or Properties

Examples: Listing Methods and Properties

This example lists the methods supported for the Databases node:

Set-Location SQL:\MyComputer\DEFAULT\Databases  
Get-Item . | Get-Member -Type Methods

This example lists the properties for a variable that has been set to an SMO Table object:

$MyVar = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SMO.Table  
$MyVar | Get-Member -Type Properties

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