No PowerShell Cmdlet to Start or Stop Something? Don’t Forget to Check for Methods on the Get Cmdlets

Many PowerShell commands return output in the form of objects (some return nothing at all). An example of this is shown in the following example where properties and their corresponding values are returned.

CommandType is a property and Cmdlet is the value for that particular property for each of the results:

1Get-Command -Noun Service -Module Microsoft.PowerShell.Management

Keep in mind that what is shown in the default output may not be the actual property names (compare the default output from Get-Process to the properties listed from Get-Process | Get-Member for an example of this).

In addition to properties, commands may also have methods which are actions that can be performed. The Get-Member cmdlet is used to determine what properties (and their actual names) and methods a command has. Any command that produces output can be piped to Get-Member.

1Get-Service -Name w32time | Get-Member

Notice as shown in the previous set of results that Get-Service has a start and stop method. I like to point this out because just because someone is only running commands that start with Get-* doesn't mean that they can't perform a RGE (resume generating event).

There are cmdlets for starting and stopping services and I recommend using them instead of the methods any time a specific command exist for performing that task, but if those two commands didn't exist the methods could be used:

The windows time service is currently running:

1Get-Service -Name w32time

Stop the service using Get-Service with the stop method:

1(Get-Service -Name w32time).Stop()
2Get-Service -Name w32time

Start the service using Get-Service with the start method:

1(Get-Service -Name w32time).Start()
2Get-Service -Name w32time

You might ask, how is this beneficial in the real world for the everyday average IT Pro?

Sometimes with a fictitious example like with Get-Service, it's hard to imagine Start-Service and Stop-Service not existing, but that's the exact scenario with the Get-SqlAgentJob cmdlet that's part of the SQLServer PowerShell module that installs as part of SQL Server Management Studio 2016.

Notice that there's no Start-SqlAgentJob cmdlet:

1Get-Command -Module SQLServer -Name *job*

Get-SqlAgentJob returns a SMO object which has a start (and stop) method (thanks to Rob Sewell for pointing this out):

1Get-SqlAgentJob -ServerInstance SQL011 -Name test | Get-Member -MemberType Method

That means it can be used to start a SQL agent job even though a specific cmdlet for performing that task doesn't exist:

1(Get-SqlAgentJob -ServerInstance SQL011 -Name test).Start()
2Get-SqlAgentJob -ServerInstance SQL011 -Name test

If I were asked in an interview what's the most important PowerShell command and I could only pick one, it would be Get-Member.

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