Tips for your profile.ps1 file when using BizTalk with Powershell

Introduction

I have been meaning for a while to add some PowerShell posts to my blog but had been busy lately. I have been using the BizTalk PowerShell provider (http://psbiztalk.codeplex.com) that my friend Randal van Splunteren helped create. I now use PowerShell  all the time in my BizTalk work and find it to be very helpful for common administrative tasks like deploying pipeline components, exporting backups of binding files, and handling automated deployments. I am definitely not a PowerShell expert but more of an enthusiast at this point. I will post some of the tips and tricks I have found in using PowerShell for BizTalk development. I am not going to introduce PowerShell for beginners but approach this as giving you some interesting, useful scripts.

I have found it typically difficult to find lots of useful examples of BizTalk PowerShell. So I aim to change this by providing some of mine so that other people can take advantage of them.

Today I am going to show most of my profile.ps1 file which is called by PowerShell when starting up the shells.

Details

Working with PowerShell and BizTalk is still a relatively involved task. This is primarily because of BizTalk’s still heavy dependence on x86 architecture. The install guide for the BizTalk PowerShell provider mentions you need to load the 32-bit version of the PowerShell shell to add the snap-in. When I first started working with this provider I kept loading the 64-bit provider and I kept getting this error:

Add-PSSnapin : The Windows PowerShell snap-in ‘BizTalkFactory.Powershell.Extensions’ is not installed on this machine.
At line:1 char:13
+ Add-PSSnapin <<<<  BizTalkFactory.Powershell.Extensions
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (BizTalkFactory.Powershell.Extensions:Stri
   ng) [Add-PSSnapin], PSArgumentException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : AddPSSnapInRead,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.AddPSSnapinCommand

So be sure to load the 32-bit shell. There are quite a few challenges for the BizTalk PowerShell scripter because the SQL provider is based on 64-bit architecture. In my daily work I often want to kick off a SQL agent job so this requires managing more than one PowerShell instance at a time. For this reason, there is some complexity in loading all of the useful providers. It is handy to do this provider loading in the profile.ps1 file. To simplify my work, I also set a few executable aliases that I frequently call during deployment of BizTalk artifacts. Most of my profile.ps1 file is shown below:

# This script is for a 64-bit system
if(([diagnostics.process]::GetCurrentProcess()).path -match '\\syswow64\\') {

	Write-Host "32-bit Powershell"

	Write-Host "Loading Powershell provider for BizTalk snap-in"
	Add-PSSnapin BizTalkFactory.Powershell.Extensions

	New-PSDrive -Name BTS -PSProvider BizTalk -Root BTS:\ -Instance "." -Database BizTalkMgmtDb
	Set-Location -Path BTS:
}
else {

	Write-Host "64-bit Powershell"

	Write-Host "Loading SQL Provider"           # from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc281962.aspx
    $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"
    $sqlpsreg="HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.PowerShell.sqlps"

    if (Get-ChildItem $sqlpsreg -ErrorAction "SilentlyContinue")  {
       throw "SQL Server Provider is not installed."
    }
    else {
        $item = Get-ItemProperty $sqlpsreg
        $sqlpsPath = [System.IO.Path]::GetDirectoryName($item.Path)
    }

    # Set mandatory variables for the SQL Server rovider
    Set-Variable -scope Global -name SqlServerMaximumChildItems -Value 0
    Set-Variable -scope Global -name SqlServerConnectionTimeout -Value 30
    Set-Variable -scope Global -name SqlServerIncludeSystemObjects -Value $false
    Set-Variable -scope Global -name SqlServerMaximumTabCompletion -Value 1000

    # Load the snapins, type data, format data
    Push-Location
    cd $sqlpsPath
    Add-PSSnapin SqlServerCmdletSnapin100
    Add-PSSnapin SqlServerProviderSnapin100
    Update-TypeData -PrependPath SQLProvider.Types.ps1xml
    update-FormatData -prependpath SQLProvider.Format.ps1xml
    Pop-Location

    # More of my code
    New-PSDrive -Name localSql -PSProvider SqlServer -Root SQLSERVER:\SQL\Bencpc
    Set-Location -Path C:

}

# Setup some useful shortcuts for commonly used executables in BizTalk deployment
Set-Alias gac "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin\gacutil.exe"
Set-Alias msbuild "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\msbuild.exe"
Set-Alias btstask "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010\btstask.exe"