Creating Graphs Using PowerShell

I'm back!

Full disclosure...I have been doing a lot of fishing with my friends and spending time with family.  This was necessary because I was getting crabby for no reason.  I'm feeling much better thanks, again, to my friends and family members.

Now, on to graphing...

I subscribe to the PowerShell Power Users group on LinkedIn.  Looking at the latest articles, I found an article by Kevin Marquette called "Graph All Things! with PSGraph and GraphViz"  (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/140856/140856-6232213168123453443).  This is pretty cool.

NOTE: using PSGraph is not like graphing in Excel.  This are simple graphs that can be used for some complex solutions.  For example, here is a simple graph:


graph basic {
    edge -From start -To middle
    edge -From middle -To end
}
Here is a sample of a complex graph:

}  | Export-PSGraph -ShowGraph

graph finite_state_machine @{rankdir='LR';size=8.5} {
    node  LR_0,LR_3,LR_4,LR_8 @{shape='doublecircle'}
    node @{shape = 'circle'}
    edge LR_0 LR_2 @{ label = "SS(B)" }
    edge LR_0 LR_1 @{ label = "SS(S)" }
    edge LR_1 LR_3 @{ label = 'S($end)' }
    edge LR_2 LR_6 @{ label = "SS(b)" }
    edge LR_2 LR_5 @{ label = "SS(a)" }
    edge LR_2 LR_4 @{ label = "S(A)" }
    edge LR_5 LR_7 @{ label = "S(b)" }
    edge LR_5 LR_5 @{ label = "S(a)" }
    edge LR_6 LR_6 @{ label = "S(b)" }
    edge LR_6 LR_5 @{ label = "S(a)" }
    edge LR_7 LR_8 @{ label = "S(b)" }
    edge LR_7 LR_5 @{ label = "S(a)" }
    edge LR_8 LR_6 @{ label = "S(b)" }
    edge LR_8 LR_5 @{ label = "S(a)" }
}  | Export-PSGraph -ShowGraph

I can use PSGraph to give high level views of how some of our processes are working.  I can see using this for network diagrams and flow charting.

My next post will be on different scripting environments (ISE, ISESteroids, Powershell Plus, etc.)  Stay tuned.