Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Overview of PowerShell

Windows PowerShell is Microsoft’s next-generation automation and scripting language. It is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Windows PowerShell was first released to the public in November 2006 as version 1.0. It was released as a separate install for Windows XP and Windows 2003, and shortly after, an install for Windows Vista was made available. Since its release, Windows PowerShell has been downloaded over two million times.

Note

From this point on, we refer to Windows PowerShell simply as PowerShell.

When Windows Server 2008 was released, PowerShell was provided with the operating system. To have access to PowerShell, you simply had to add the Windows PowerShell feature through the new Server Manager.

Note ...