1. PowerShell for Data Professionals PowerShell 2.0 brings a lot of functionality to help you automate interaction with you servers. 2.0 itself brings a script editor that was missing.  Apparently ripped off from VS 2010 * (in a good way)

2. Why PowerShell PowerShell bring one huge thing to the table (for me): The Pipeline Technically the whole ‘relies on the.Net Framework’ thing is pretty big too but for me… The second biggest thing is the insainely generous community

3. PowerShell Bolt-Ons In addition to the out of the box PowerShell features there are some ‘expansion packs’ in the form of Snap-Ins. The Snap-Ins for SQL Server are SqlServerCmdletSnapin100 SqlServerProviderSnapin100

4. PowerShell Has Friends Here is just a short list of a few products Idera’s PowerShell Plus Quest’s PowerGui.org Saipien’s Primal Script

5. ApplicationVersionCmdletsProvider Managem ent GUI 2007402Yes 2008Yes No 2008Yes No 200774YesNo 2007Yes 2007YesNo 2007Yes No 08.02.001 2 47No 1.033No List obtained from Wikipedia

6. IBM WebSphere MQ [39] 6.0.2.244No Quest Management Shell for Active Directory [40] 1.140No Special Operations Software Specops Command [41] [41] 1.0YesNoYes VMware Infrastructure Toolkit [42] 1.5157No Internet Information Services [43] 7.054YesNo Ensim Unify Enterprise Edition [44] 1.6YesNoYes Windows 7 Windows 7 Troubleshooting Center [45] [45] 6.1YesNoYes Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010YesNo

7. Helpful Blogs http://blogs.technet.com/HeyScriptingGuy/ http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/ http://chadwickmiller.spaces.live.com/ http://sqlblog.com/blogs/allen_white/

8. Books! Best book on using PowerShell for SQL Great but no chapters directly on SQL

9. More Books Surprisingly Helpful Excellent but skip to chapter 7 (2 nd Edition) Buy this today!