[andreasjordan]

Part of #10794: the 17 Copy commands. The instance level commands and the database level commands follow in two more PRs, and the two sites of Invoke-DbaDbDataMasking and Invoke-DbaDbLogShipRecovery are fixed in #10791.

One commit per command with its test, as in the tier PRs.

The defect

The Query() script methods of the SMO Server and Database objects (xml/dbatools.Types.ps1xml) return (...ExecuteWithResults($Query)).Tables[0], which is $null for a batch without a result set: CREATE, DROP, ALTER, EXEC of most procedures. Called as a statement of its own, the call writes that $null into the output of the command. So Copy-DbaAgentOperator for two operators returned four objects, two of them $null, and @(Copy-DbaAgentJob ...).Count was one too high for every job.

The fix is $null = in front of the 40 calls, as most of the code base already does.

The tests did not notice because they count with $results.Status.Count or read $results.Name. Member enumeration skips $null, so both look right while the output has twice as many items. Every touched test counts the output itself now: @($results).Count. The test guide tests/CLAUDE.md recommends $results.Status.Count "for accurate counting in dbatools context", which is exactly the pattern that hid this. That is for the follow-up, not this PR.

Plain $null = fixes

Command	Sites	What wrote the $null
Copy-DbaAgentJob	1	every copied job
Copy-DbaAgentJobCategory	5	job, operator and alert categories, new or recreated with -Force
Copy-DbaAgentJobStep	1	every copied step
Copy-DbaAgentOperator	1	every copied operator
Copy-DbaAgentProxy	1	every copied proxy
Copy-DbaAgentSchedule	1	every copied schedule
Copy-DbaBackupDevice	1	every copied device
Copy-DbaCustomError	1	every copied message, one per language
Copy-DbaDataCollector	2	every copied collection set (the second site cannot run, see below)
Copy-DbaInstanceAuditSpecification	1	every copied specification
Copy-DbaServerRole	2	the role and each of its permissions
Copy-DbaStartupProcedure	1	the drop of an existing procedure with -Force

Commands with more than the $null

Fixed in the same commit, so that no command is left half fixed.

Copy-DbaDbAssembly: two sites (TRUSTWORTHY, -Force drop). The create call passed the database name as the second argument of Database.Query, which is AllTables, not a database. That returned the empty table collection and so wrote nothing, but only by accident. The argument is gone; the call runs in the right database anyway, because it goes through the destination database object.

Copy-DbaInstanceAudit: one site, plus

• an audit that exists on the destination got the status Skipped, but the object was never written, so the caller got nothing for it;
• -Force is meant to drop the server audit specifications that use the audit before it replaces the audit, but the loop went over $spec and tested and dropped $auditSpecification, a variable that does not exist. No specification was ever dropped; they stayed on the destination while the audit was replaced underneath them. The specifications are collected first (a drop inside the enumeration would modify the collection), then disabled and dropped.

Copy-DbaLinkedServer: the sp_setnetname for a SQL Server linked server whose name differs from its data source. Its hunk is 80 lines away from the one in #10792, so the two PRs do not conflict.

Copy-DbaResourceGovernor: 16 sites, plus

• -ExcludeResourcePool assigned the filtered pools to $pool instead of $pools, so no pool was copied at all. The filter now also leaves out the system pools internal and default, as the default path does;
• -Force dropped the workload groups of an existing pool while it enumerated their collection, which failed with "Collection was modified", so replacing a pool that has workload groups always reported Failed. The groups are collected first. The new -ExcludeResourcePool test found this one.

Copy-DbaSystemDbUserObject: the classic mode ran every statement of its transfer script through Query(), so it returned one $null per successful statement, while its documentation says "The Classic mode returns no output". The -Classic test asserted that the output is not empty and passed only because of those $null values; it asserts that there is no output now.

Tests

Command	Test
Copy-DbaAgentJob, -JobCategory, -JobStep, -Operator, -Proxy, -CustomError, -ServerRole	count added to an existing case
Copy-DbaAgentSchedule	count in the -Force context, the first context copies every schedule of the instance
Copy-DbaBackupDevice	the copy is limited to the device of the test, so the count does not depend on other devices
Copy-DbaDbAssembly	count in the -Force case; the plain copy covers the dropped argument
Copy-DbaInstanceAudit	new integration test: copy, copy again (Skipped), replace with -Force while an enabled specification uses the audit on the destination
Copy-DbaInstanceAuditSpecification	new integration test: copy a specification whose audit exists on both instances
Copy-DbaLinkedServer	new context: a linked server whose network name was changed with sp_setnetname; checks the network name on the destination too
Copy-DbaResourceGovernor	output counted against the status values (their number depends on the edition); new case with -ExcludeResourcePool and -Force over the pools of the first copy
Copy-DbaStartupProcedure	new -Force context
Copy-DbaSystemDbUserObject	-Classic asserts no output
Copy-DbaDataCollector	no test: copying collection sets needs a configured Data Collector on both instances, which neither CI nor the lab has. Its second site, the server reconfiguration, cannot run at all: -NoServerReconfig is set to $true just before it.

Lab (set03: SQL Server 2019, 2022 and 2025, Windows PowerShell 5.1): all 16 test files green on this branch. With the command files of development and the tests of this branch, every file fails at exactly the new assertions and nowhere else, for example:

• Copy-DbaAgentOperator for two operators: 4 objects instead of 2
• Copy-DbaResourceGovernor: 16 objects for 6 results, and -ExcludeResourcePool copied no pool
• Copy-DbaSystemDbUserObject -Classic: 59 $null values instead of no output
• Copy-DbaInstanceAudit: no object for the skipped audit, and the specification still there after -Force

The -Force defect of Copy-DbaResourceGovernor showed up in between, on the run with only the -ExcludeResourcePool fix: the pool reported Failed with "Collection was modified".

Not in this PR

• The instance level and database level commands of Query() - 103 calls without $null = write a $null to the output of their command #10794, in two more PRs.
• A Compliance check against new bare Query() calls, once the three PRs are merged; until then it would fail on the sites they fix.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[potatoqualitee]

Reviewed at 32a9d40504547d07c8e79d248de2f6f374107795. No material defect found.

Reviewed the complete 33-file patch, all 40 changed Query call sites, surrounding migration/status/error paths, tests, description, discussions, and exact-head CI. The suppressed calls perform administrative SQL and retain the intended migration result objects. The assembly-query argument correction, skipped-audit output, forced audit-specification handling, and Resource Governor collection/filter changes were also checked.

A focused PowerShell 7.6.7 check of the actual Server.Query script method confirmed the extra null output and showed why Status.Count missed it. The updated tests count actual output while retaining meaningful state/status assertions. All 20 executed head checks passed and one Windows check was skipped. SQL integration tests were not rerun locally; the Data Collector suppression sites have no configured integration boundary.

[potatoqualitee]

awesome 🙌🏼