PowerShellPlus 3.5 Speed Improvement

2010-10-28T13:01:00Z

Long time users have mentioned that they noticed a big improvement in running commands. I am happy to report that we have indeed improved performance by making a key change to how the Variables Tool Window is managed after any command is run in the console including when a script is executed. We corrected the following issues that contributed to sub-optimal performance:

The Variables window was being completely reloaded no matter whether anything changed or not. Since this window contains the running state of all PowerShell system and user objects, this could result in a significant performance hit over the lifetime of the current Console session
The Variables window was being updated whether it was visible or not
Object arrays containing 1000's of elements was taking a significant amount of time to reload

The performance enhancements to PowerShellPlus 3.5 now includes the following:

Simple variables (i.e. $a=1) are only updated if the values have changed
The Variables window is NOT updated if it is not visible which includes the View being off or the window being pinned to the side
A separate copy is made of object arrays containing more than 10 elements since more than are not displayed in the Variable list and the original copy is preserved so that it can be accessed in the Console or script code

These improvements now to contribute to a major improvement in running commands or scripts!

The current caveats still exist that could cause performance issues:

Complex object variables containing a hierarchy of values are always reloaded since the time to figure out if they are different did not contribute to an improvement
If you drill into a complex object and leave the leaf node open it will take time to refresh the Variables tree since certain objects need to be re-acquired to display their value (i.e. a round trip call to a server)

The workaround is to make sure not to leave complex object leaf nodes open in the Variables window between running commands in the Console or scripts in the Code Editor.

One other note - several customers reported that certain complex objects were causing PowerShellPlus to halt. The problem was identified as an error when attempting to Cast special variable object values to a PSObject for display in the Variables tree. That is now fixed.

PowerShellPlus 3.5 was released in early September which was followed by two minor service packs about 2 weeks apart. The current release is 3.5.2130.4. You can run Check for Updates on the Help menu to see if you have the latest.

We concentrated on raising the quality bar in this release along we many great new features. I encourage everyone to read the Release Notes during Setup. You can also find them along with two additional documents, Administrators Guide to Windows PowerShell Remoting and Managing SharePoint 2010 with PowerShell Plus, on the Start Menu under Idera > PowerShellPlus > Documents.

To get the latest version if you are registered user, go to the Support site and request an upgrade.

To get a trial, go to the Product page and request a trial.

Richard Giles • Idera • Product Manager - PowerShell Products

Richard's World

PowerShellPlus 3.5 Speed Improvement