My main client the other week decided to update an ETL I had created for them over a year ago and add another couple of imports to it. This basically meant creating some PowerShell code and SQL code and schema to import the data.

I had started to write stuff out by hand when I suddenly remembered a PowerShell Script I had previously written and later wrote about for Red-Gate’s Simpletalk.

I won’t rewrite the post here, but basically if I give it the name of a CSV file, it’ll attempt to create the table schema, an import stored procedure and some of the object information for PowerShell. I still have to make some edits usually but this saves me a lot of work.

And it’s a good thing because after creating and testing the two imports that they requested last week, on Friday they scrapped that approach and decided to combine the data into a single file which means I needed to ditch all that work and start from scratch.

I wrote all the necessary PowerShell, SQL, and did the testing in less than 30 minutes. It was fairly trivial and fairly efficient. Or perhaps I was just being lazy.

But the time it took me to write the original script to create the scripts has definitely saved me time and as a result saved my customer money. So in the long rung, it’s well worth it!

And that’s all for this week!