A year ago I blogged about building a SQL Server 2008 Object Dependency Viewer based on a script by PowerShell MVP, Doug Finke (Blog|Twitter). Since then Doug has created an alternative solution based on the new Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout features in Visual Studio 2010. The approach Doug takes builds a DGML XML file using…
Tag Archive: Charting
Powershell Charting with MS Chart Controls
Richard MacDonald’s demonstrates using Microsoft Chart Controls with Powershell in his post, Charting with Powershell. The chart controls are free and work with standard Windows forms. Another nice thing is the ability data bind to any object that implements IEnumerable (arrays, hashes, data tables, etc.). This makes working with the charts particularly easy, just create a hashtable and bind…
Making Disk, Database and Table Graphs with Powershell
Sometimes seeing data visually rather than in text format makes things easier to understand. For instance, I prefer to use WinDirStat to see a Treemap of disk space usage by file and type rather than a sorted text list of large files. Seeing the files visually I can immediately determine which files are taking up the most space. I also would…
Build Your Own SQL Server 2008 Object Dependency Viewer
I saw a demonstration by Doug Finke during the Windows PowerShell Virtual User Group Meeting #9 for displaying network graphs and thought this would be a great technique for visualizing SQL Server object dependencies. The Powershell code is available on Doug’s blog post entitled PowerShell, Visualize the Peanut Butter Recall Data. The scripts he provides use the NodeXL .NET…
