Have you heard about Get-WQLObject?

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WQL is a part of SCCM administration whether you like it or not. Over time you may become quite savvy with writing up WQL queries and appreciate that it mimics SQL in just enough of a way to allow some fancy collections. 

You can also use the ‘Query’ section under monitoring to view, develop, and run these WQL queries outside of collection evaluation. This can be useful for getting some quick data in a one-off fashion at a point in time. Commonly I will need to interact with this data though such as when I’m remediating some issues via a script. As much fun as copy pasting to excel and importing a CSV is… I wrote a script instead! 

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The Meat:

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What I’m doing at it’s core is a WMI query. That is the real meat here. So… here’s a basic function that takes in a WQL query and gives you the raw output. 

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$Query = @"
select distinct s.Name,
sw.ProductName,
sw.ProductVersion,
cbs.CNIsOnline,
os.Caption
from  SMS_R_System s
inner join SMS_G_System_INSTALLED_SOFTWARE sw on sw.ResourceID = s.ResourceId
inner join SMS_CollectionMemberClientBaselineStatus cbs ON cbs.ResourceID = s.ResourceId
inner join SMS_G_System_Operating_System os ON os.ResourceID = s.ResourceID
where sw.ProductName like "%7-Zip%"
and sw.ProductVersion NOT IN ("18.05.00.0","18.05")
order by sw.ProductVersion
"@

function Get-WQLObject {
    param(
        # WQL formatted query to perform
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$Query,
        # SMS Provider to query against
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$SMSProvider
    )
    $SiteCode = (Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\sms" -ClassName "__Namespace" -ComputerName $SMSProvider).Name.Substring(5, 3)
    $Namespace = [string]::Format("root\sms\site_{0}", $SiteCode)
    Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $SMSProvider -Namespace $Namespace -Query $Query
}

Get-WQLObject -SMSProvider 'SCCM.CONTOSO.COM' -Query $Query

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This almost shouldn’t even be a function, but it is because I put ‘function’ in front of it with a name and a {.

So, if you run this you will get some data back, though it is a bit ugly honestly. 

But hey, this is PowerShell. It is object oriented. I can dig into this object. I can expand cbs (Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout anyone?) and then I can expand CNIsOnline and I’ll get the value I truly care about. Same for sw, and then ProductName, and ProductVersion. But that sounds tedious.

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The Potatoes:

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Right, so I technically have what I need. But I want more! Fatten things up a bit ya know? Couple scoops of potatoes. Disclaimer: This IS potatoes, it does slow things down a bit. Though to be fair, any large WQL query via PowerShell is going to be slow no matter what.

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function Get-WQLObject {
    param(
        # WQL formatted query to perform
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$Query,
        # SMS Provider to query against
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$SMSProvider,
        # Optional PSCredential 
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $false)]
        [pscredential]$Credential
    )
    Begin {
        if ($PSBoundParameters.ContainsKey('Credential')) {
            $AddedDefaultParam = $true
            $PSDefaultParameterValues.Add("Get-WmiObject:Credential", $Credential)
        }
        $SiteCode = (Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\sms" -ClassName "__Namespace" -ComputerName $SMSProvider).Name.Substring(5, 3)
        $Namespace = [string]::Format("root\sms\site_{0}", $SiteCode)
    }
    Process {
        $RawResults = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $SMSProvider -Namespace $Namespace -Query $Query
        $PropertySelectors = $RawResults | Get-Member -MemberType Property | Where-Object { -not $_.Name.StartsWith('__') } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name | ForEach-Object {
            $Class = $_
            $Properties = $RawResults.$Class | Get-Member -MemberType Property | Where-Object { -not $_.Name.StartsWith('__') } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name
            foreach ($Property in $Properties) {
                [string]::Format("@{{Label='{1}.{0}';Expression = {{`$_.{1}.{0}}}}}", $Property, $Class)
            }
        }
    }
    end {
        if ($AddedDefaultParam) {
            $PSDefaultParameterValues.Remove("Get-WmiObject:Credential")
        }
        $PropertySelector = [scriptblock]::Create($($PropertySelectors -join ','))
        $RawResults | Select-Object -Property $(. $PropertySelector)
    }
}

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Starting to look a lot more like a function! You know it should be a function when it starts doing weird things that you don’t feel like typing out over and over. 

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$PropertySelectors = $RawResults | Get-Member -MemberType Property | Where-Object { -not $_.Name.StartsWith('__') } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name | ForEach-Object {
    $Class = $_
    $Properties = $RawResults.$Class | Get-Member -MemberType Property | Where-Object { -not $_.Name.StartsWith('__') } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name
    foreach ($Property in $Properties) {
        [string]::Format("@{{Label='{1}.{0}';Expression = {{`$_.{1}.{0}}}}}", $Property, $Class)
    }
}

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Remember how I said we could ‘dig into’ the objects? This snippet above is generating a string (that we will join and turn into a scriptblock) to do just that. We are going to dynamically find our classes and properties by leveraging Get-Member and filtering out system properties. Those system properties don’t interest me in this context so I’m filtering them out with “Where-Object { -not $_.Name.StartsWith(‘__’) }” leaving me with the properties I care about.

Couple notes:

•  I like [string]::Format. It is actually REALLY fast in terms of CPU time, and for me personally it makes things more ‘manageable.’ For some people it is just confusing. You can simply do $Potatoes = “$Var1″+’bacon’+”$Var2” or many other methods if you prefer. ($Var1 = ‘Cheese’ by the way)
• In our generated string I am escaping $_ by writing out `$_. This is so that we don’t actually expand out $_ right now. I want to treat it is a string to be used later.

The output, based on the 7-Zip software query above, can be seen below and should look familiar if you’ve ever done some custom Select-Object with calculated properties.

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@{Label='cbs.CNIsOnline';Expression = {$_.cbs.CNIsOnline}},
@{Label='os.Caption';Expression ={ $_.os.Caption}},
@{Label='s.Name';Expression = {$_.s.Name}},
@{Label='sw.ProductName';Expression ={$_.sw.ProductName}},
@{Label='sw.ProductVersion';Expression = {$_.sw.ProductVersion}}

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To leverage this code in the way I am hoping to though, it cannot just be a string. It has to be a scriptblock that can be dot-sourced. Let’s do that!

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 $PropertySelector = [scriptblock]::Create($($PropertySelectors -join ','))

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Because we are going to be wanting to expand out from $_ in the context of $RawResults | Select-Object… we need to execute the scriptblock. Simply passing $PropertySelector won’t work, so instead we will dot-source the scriptblock.

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$RawResults | Select-Object -Property $(. $PropertySelector)

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This will ‘execute’ our $PropertySelector statement that we generated. So {$_.s.Name} will actually be {$<instance of $RawResults that we are piping>.s.Name} which is what we want!

And of course the output from the function now looks MUCH nicer.

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The Gravy!

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I know, I know. This has all been really dry. Enter… the gravy!

WQL… you’ve got that down right? You know a good 2-300 WMI Classes under the root\sms\site_<sitecode> namespace including their properties right? Yeah, me too. 

What if we could leverage all those queries you have under you ‘Queries’ node in monitoring?

$Gravy = ‘DynamicParam’

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function Get-WQLObject {
    param(
        # WQL formatted query to perform
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true, ParameterSetName = 'CustomQuery')]
        [string]
        $Query,
        # SMS Provider to query against
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]
        $SMSProvider,
        # Optional PSCredential (unfortunately I can't figure out how to use this cred in the DynamicParam WMI queries without providing info outside the function)
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $false, ParameterSetName = 'CustomQuery')]
        [pscredential]
        $Credential
    )
    DynamicParam {
        if (($SMSProvider = $PSBoundParameters['SMSProvider'])) {
            $ParameterName = 'SCCMQuery'
            $RuntimeParameterDictionary = New-Object System.Management.Automation.RuntimeDefinedParameterDictionary
            $AttributeCollection = New-Object System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection[System.Attribute]
            $ParameterAttribute = New-Object System.Management.Automation.ParameterAttribute
            $ParameterAttribute.Mandatory = $true
            $ParameterAttribute.ParameterSetName = 'ExistingQuery'
            $ParameterAttribute.HelpMessage = 'Specify the name of a query that already exists in your ConfigMgr environment'
            $AttributeCollection.Add($ParameterAttribute)
            $SiteCode = (Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\sms" -ClassName "__Namespace" -ComputerName $SMSProvider).Name.Substring(5, 3)
            $Namespace = [string]::Format("root\sms\site_{0}", $SiteCode)
            $arrSet = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $SMSProvider -Namespace $Namespace -Query "SELECT Name FROM SMS_Query WHERE Expression not like '%##PRM:%'" | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name
            $ValidateSetAttribute = New-Object System.Management.Automation.ValidateSetAttribute($arrSet)
            $AttributeCollection.Add($ValidateSetAttribute)
            $RuntimeParameter = New-Object System.Management.Automation.RuntimeDefinedParameter($ParameterName, [string], $AttributeCollection)
            $RuntimeParameterDictionary.Add($ParameterName, $RuntimeParameter)
            return $RuntimeParameterDictionary
        }
    }
    Begin {
        $SCCMQuery = $PsBoundParameters[$ParameterName]
        if ($PSBoundParameters.ContainsKey('Credential') -and -not $PSDefaultParameterValues.ContainsKey("Get-WmiObject:Credential")) {
            $AddedDefaultParam = $true
            $PSDefaultParameterValues.Add("Get-WmiObject:Credential", $Credential)
        }
        $SiteCode = (Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\sms" -ClassName "__Namespace" -ComputerName $SMSProvider).Name.Substring(5, 3)
        $Namespace = [string]::Format("root\sms\site_{0}", $SiteCode)
        if ($PSCmdlet.ParameterSetName -eq 'ExistingQuery') {
            $Query = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $SMSProvider -Namespace $Namespace -Query "SELECT Expression FROM SMS_Query WHERE Name ='$SCCMQuery'" | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Expression
        }
    }
    Process {
        $RawResults = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $SMSProvider -Namespace $Namespace -Query $Query
        $PropertySelectors = $RawResults | Get-Member -MemberType Property | Where-Object { -not $_.Name.StartsWith('__') } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name | ForEach-Object {
            $Class = $_
            $Properties = $RawResults.$Class | Get-Member -MemberType Property | Where-Object { -not $_.Name.StartsWith('__') } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name
            foreach ($Property in $Properties) {
                [string]::Format("@{{Label='{1}.{0}';Expression = {{`$_.{1}.{0}}}}}", $Property, $Class)
            }
        }
    }
    end {
        if ($AddedDefaultParam) {
            $PSDefaultParameterValues.Remove("Get-WmiObject:Credential")
        }
        $PropertySelector = [scriptblock]::Create($($PropertySelectors -join ','))
        $RawResults | Select-Object -Property $(. $PropertySelector)
    }
}

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There we go! Now we are nice and bloated!

What have I done!!!

• Added ParameterSets
• Added DynamicParam
• Justified creating a function by making this thing nice and ugly

We now have two ParameterSets, one of which is less obvious because it is introduced in the ‘DynamicParam’ block. 

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$ParameterAttribute.ParameterSetName = 'ExistingQuery'

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And then we do a bit of magic which allows us to tab-complete our existing Queries that you have in SCCM right now. (Note: I’m excluding those that require parameters because… yeah I don’t feel like writing in that logic right now)

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$arrSet = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $SMSProvider -Namespace $Namespace -Query "SELECT Name FROM SMS_Query WHERE Expression not like '%##PRM:%'" | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name

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So what does this do for me? 

You now have tab completion based on the name of the queries in SCCM. You can execute all of your pre-existing queries, and even find them with tab-completion or by using ctrl+space.

I did mention this above, but I will say it again. A slow query is still a slow query, and our calculated properties isn’t going to make it faster. This function adds some overhead to your query as we are also piping it to a select-object after the fact. BUT it is pretty cool right? Get those gears turning on DynamicParams!

Some good-to-mentions about the function:

• To use the -SCCMQuery parameter you need to supply -SMSProvider first. if (($SMSProvider = $PSBoundParameters[‘SMSProvider’]))
• Unfortunately, no -Credential param when you are using -SCCMQuery because I wasn’t able to figure out how to use the credentials from the parameter inside the DynamicParam which would be needed to get our list of expressions. Let me know if you figure it out!
• It is on GitHub
• I might have made some gross oversights and overcomplicated this

Cody Mathis
@CodyMathis123