Automate XML Integration Tasks from PowerShell

The CData Cmdlets for XML are standard PowerShell cmdlets that make it easy to accomplish data cleansing, normalization, backup, and other integration tasks by enabling real-time and bidirectional access to XML.

PowerShell Cmdlets or ADO.NET Provider?

The Cmdlets are not only a PowerShell interface to XML, but also an SQL interface; this tutorial shows how to use both to create, retrieve, update, and delete XML data. We also show examples of the ADO.NET equivalent, which is possible with the CData ADO.NET Provider for XML. To access XML data from other .NET applications, like LINQPad, use the CData ADO.NET Provider for XML.

Once you have acquired the necessary connection properties, accessing XML data in PowerShell can be enabled in three steps.

See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models XML APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

After setting the URI and providing any authentication values, set DataModel to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

The DataModel property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

• Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your XML data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
• FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
• Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

See the Modeling XML Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

PowerShell

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module XMLCmdlets

2. Connect:

   $xml = Connect-XML -URI "$URI" -DataModel "$DataModel"

3. Search for and retrieve data:

   $[ personal.name.last ] = "Roberts" $people = Select-XML -Connection $xml -Table "people" -Where "[ personal.name.last ] = `'$[ personal.name.last ]`'" $people

   You can also use the Invoke-XML cmdlet to execute SQL commands:

   $people = Invoke-XML -Connection $xml -Query 'SELECT * FROM people WHERE [ personal.name.last ] = @[ personal.name.last ]' -Params @{'@[ personal.name.last ]'='Roberts'}

ADO.NET

1. Load the provider's assembly:

   [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile("C:\Program Files\CData\CData ADO.NET Provider for XML\lib\System.Data.CData.XML.dll")

2. Connect to XML:

   $conn= New-Object System.Data.CData.XML.XMLConnection("URI=C:/people.xml;DataModel=Relational;") $conn.Open()

3. Instantiate the XMLDataAdapter, execute an SQL query, and output the results:

   $sql="SELECT [ personal.name.first ], [ personal.name.last ] from people" $da= New-Object System.Data.CData.XML.XMLDataAdapter($sql, $conn) $dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable $da.Fill($dt) $dt.Rows | foreach { Write-Host $_.[ personal.name.first ] $_.[ personal.name.last ] }

Update XML Data

PowerShell

ADO.NET

Insert XML Data

PowerShell

ADO.NET

Delete XML Data

PowerShell

ADO.NET