Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

Rating:
Summary: Perfect Administrative Introduction to WMI
Review: For administrators who wish to have a greater control over Windows NT-based networks and were looking for a way to do it without having to learn a million different programming and scripting languages, the WMI is for you - and this is the perfect starting point.

Designed and written for system administrators, the focus of this book is to introduce you to the WMI from a VBScript scripting perspective. Regardless of scripting experience, the authors guides the reader in both theory and hands-on scripting from the basics of the VBScript language (a full chapter introducing you to VBScript and scripting in general, which is completely skip-able if you are already familiar with VBScript) to the scripting WMI API, covering a healthy percentage of the WMI objects and their use in easy to understand scripts.

The authors have written neither a recipe book of pre-created scripts, nor a true reference-only guide. If you are looking for the 2 minute answer, or are already proficient in the WMI, this isn't for you. Instead, the authors have written a text designed to give you a firm foundation of the WMI and the ability to quickly enhance your environment with no more than what they have provided, while still leaving room for you to confidently continue your learning of the WMI from other sources.

This is the second WMI book I've read, and although this one did not come out first, I found it a much better starting point than the others. You do need to make the time investment, and there is as much reading as there are activities, but you will find it well worth your effort.

Rating:
Summary: Windows Management Instrumentation
Review: I have been working on de-cyphering the WMI layers for the last couple of months. Microsoft's documentation is lacking to say the least. This book allowed me to get up to speed in a matter of three days!

Highly recommend!

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely 5 stars!
Review: I read everything I could find on the subject and STILL didn't know where to start. The authors managed to take it from concept to reality and developed it such that anyone could pick it up. Whether you want to write programs or scripts, or just understand the concepts, This book should become the defacto standard. Great job!

Rating:
Summary: Good for sysadmins/scripters, limited in use for programmers
Review: If you're concerned with automating system administration of Win2K boxes using scripting this might be the book for you.

If, however, you are interested in writing management applications you will not find the information you need here.

The subtitle of the book says it all "expert scripting insight for Windows 200 administrators" so maybe I'm being a little hard on this book but Amazon doesn't show the subtitle so make sure this is what you're after before you buy the book.

Rating:
Summary: It's a great WMI book for VBscripting admins
Review: The authors do a good job of showing lots of WMI VBscript code examples, and they weave it together with good explanatory prose. Using this book, along with the WMI SDK docs and samples from Microsoft gave me enough info to do some usefull stuff with WMI.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: The authors of this book not only show expert knowledge in WMI and scripting, but expert insight on explaining the subject in the best possible way. As a VBScript 'programmer' wanting to learn WMI, I almost broke down in tears when a plethora of helpful info that took me weeks to learn, was explained as tips within the first few chapters. I wish this was the first VBScript book I had read.

This book was cleverly put together to provide and excellent book for people new or experienced with VBScript. It contains one chapter of VBScript which you can skip if you like, and tips throughout to explain VB Script specific functions which can be easily skipped if you know VBScript and are only concerned with WMI. I did review the VBScript chapter, and found it the best reading I've seen on the subject. This book together with a VBScript syntax reference (available from microsoft.com) are all you need to learn and apply VBScript, quickly. I also bought WMI essentials (SAMS), which I wont be reading.

The New Riders Expert series has come through again. (picture in circle on cover)

- Satisfied Customer

Rating:
Summary: Good... but...
Review: This is a good book for system administrators who utilize WMI on a daily basis to help automate tasks. The author does a decent job of explaining how to incorporate WMI into VBScript to retrieve information from the WMI about the local computer to aid in tasks such as hardware management, application management and other inventory/asset tasks that a sysadmin would be faced with on a daily basis.

However, if you are looking for a pure WMI reference, this book falls far short. It does not cover many of the classes available in WMI, and outside of VBScript provides no other access methods for WMI (any there are tons). The author basically misses the power of WMI by focusing on single tasks that can be in a one-off approach instead of looking of WMI as a whole and seeing its power in management across a large network or Enterprise.

A good book for the one-off tasks that normally would take quite a bit of time; a not-so-good book for the programmer wanting to get into a deep understanding of WMI.

Rating:
Summary: Good... but...
Review: This is a good book for system administrators who utilize WMI on a daily basis to help automate tasks. The author does a decent job of explaining how to incorporate WMI into VBScript to retrieve information from the WMI about the local computer to aid in tasks such as hardware management, application management and other inventory/asset tasks that a sysadmin would be faced with on a daily basis.

However, if you are looking for a pure WMI reference, this book falls far short. It does not cover many of the classes available in WMI, and outside of VBScript provides no other access methods for WMI (any there are tons). The author basically misses the power of WMI by focusing on single tasks that can be in a one-off approach instead of looking of WMI as a whole and seeing its power in management across a large network or Enterprise.

A good book for the one-off tasks that normally would take quite a bit of time; a not-so-good book for the programmer wanting to get into a deep understanding of WMI.