[Info-ingres] Windows Server and batch scripts

[Roy Hann]

Martin Bowes wrote:

> Much to my horror I've had to install a server on a windows box....Ugh,
> I feel unclean.
> 
> How do you automate batch scripts to do basic maintenance such as backups,
> modifies and optimizes? If anyone has a sample script and some pointers
> on what the cron equivalent is on Micropox then I'd be very grateful to
> see them.
> 
> Martin Bowes
 
As Michael Cressy pointed out, the Windows Task Scheduler is what you
need. As he also said, it's more powerful than cron.

What he didn't say is that it can be a royal pain to diagnose and debug
when something goes wrong. It's idea of success is doing its own job
successfully, not your script doing its job successfully. "The operation
was a complete success. Unfortunately the patient died."

Working across multiple platforms I would not counsel you to invest any
time in learning PowerShell. It is undoubtedly capable. It is vastly
more capable than the DOS scripting language. But the learning curve is
steep and long and you end up with a skill that is applicable only to
Windows.

I have become a bit of a fan-boy for Python (Python 3.5 to be specific),
which I now use for all my platform-independent scripting.