Querying the MDT database using a custom model

re: Querying the MDT database using a custom model

Michael Niehaus — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:57:12 GMT

I agree that web services are a great way to do more complex manipulations, running the code on the back end instead of on the client and then just returning a set of variable values for the client to use.

You just need to be a developer (or a developer at heart) to create and implement these.

-Michael

re: Querying the MDT database using a custom model

Eggg84 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:57:54 GMT

@blynch6038

you can download

http://mdtwizardeditor.codeplex.com/

which michael wrote, for just this purpose :)

-Dustin

re: Querying the MDT database using a custom model

Eggg84 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:49:04 GMT

It is also very useful to do this same type of lookup using webservices. This way you can pass the model name (such as HP's with the random digits at the end) to the webservice, and then using .NET code parse the model name before returning a result back to your build.

This gives you the added benefit of it being central also - if all your build servers hit this webservice, you won't need to update customsettings on each one of your Deployment Pointss every time you add a new model, simply make sure your webservice returns the proper value, and you're all set.

re: Querying the MDT database using a custom model

blynch6038 — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:26:29 GMT

Is it possible during the inital config screen to add a window that will have drop down boxes to select item's that will be written as variables for the deployment?

Basically what I am looking to do is to use the wizardeditor to add a new pane that will have a series of drop down boxes to select things like Grade and Floor that the pc is on so that I can use that to determine what OU to put the client workstation in?

I would also like to make two drop down's for computer name so they can select room number and pc location and those two varibles will be merged to equal the computer name.

re: Querying the MDT database using a custom model

Michael Niehaus — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:16:18 GMT

Because we're using a SQL query from the client side, we can't do wildcard matching without reading all of the rows and comparing them. (It's backwards from the normal SQL "LIKE" processing.) That's doable, but potentially not very efficient - it would be better done on the server side through a stored procedure.

It's something that was considered for MDT 2010, but we didn't have time to get it done.

-Michael

re: Querying the MDT database using a custom model

Michael Niehaus — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:08:39 GMT

Yes, you could build a folder structure something like "Out-of-box Drivers\Lenovo\6483" and then specify in CustomSettings.ini "DriverGroup001=%Make%\%Model%". More on that in a future post...

-Michael

re: Querying the MDT database using a custom model

Cirem — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:07:55 GMT

Michael,

Is there any way to do something similar in MDT 2010. In your script you adjust %model% to the new determined %CustomModel% based on your script. Now that we have folders in MDT 2010 What I would like to do is use the newly determined %model% in the TS for injecting the drivers from a specific driver folder in MDT. Somehow use the injectdrivers task to use the %model% folder for injecting the drivers

maybe its a bad idea ;-)

Thanks

Dave

re: Querying the MDT database using a custom model

JohnQuirk — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:15:43 GMT

Hi Michael,

This works well for us with some HP models, but it'd be really good if we could just use the database and put in "HPDC7600%" as the model name and have the scripts accept the wildcard. I'm sure there's a very good reason why we can't...