Understanding WMI Scripting

Rating:
Summary: A must have for the WMI professional
Review: Ever wonder why you never see "Medicine for Dummies" or "Learn Internal Medicine in 24 Hours" in your doctor's bookcase? You are more likely to find a book called "Principals of Internal Medicine" in your doctor's book case. Alain Lissoir's "Understanding WMI Scripting" and his second book "Leveraging WMI Scripting" are the "Principals of WMI". They are the WMI books that are in my office bookcase. When I need to get a list of all of the CIM classes available for MOM or Exchange I go to these books first. His books contain detailed information about the WMI architecture, WQL, tools like CIM studio, Event scripting, Win32 Providers, Active Directory providers, Performance providers, Exchange providers, WMI and the.NET Framework, and a lot more than I can list. All of the source code used in the book can be downloaded from the author's website. Just the code alone in this book has saved me countless hours of work. I was once stuck at a customer's site and couldn't figure out why I didn't see the "High Performance Cooked Counter" classes (i.e., Win32_PerfFormattedData) on this one Exchange server. I called someone at my office and had them lookup "High-Performance providers" and on page 493 of "Leveraging WMI Scripting" it said to do a "Winmgmt /resyncperf" command. Prior to that call I had spent over an hour google'ing for that solution. These books have not failed me yet. Everything you need to know about WMI can be found through the Table of Contents or Index of these books. If you are the kind of person that tries to work through a problem until you get stuck and then go to the book then these are your books. If you are looking for a book to read while lounging beside a pool this probably is not the book for you. However, if you consider yourself a WMI professional and need your own set of "Principals of WMI" then "Understanding WMI Scripting" and the second book "Leveraging WMI Scripting" are must haves.

Rating:
Summary: I had great hopes for this book
Review: I bought both of these WMI books, and read this one on vacation. I really wanted to like this book --- but the truth is that I HATE IT. However, I give it two stars, because ALAIN must be a very smart person. He does have information in this book, I have not seen anywhere else. But dude, he needs to learn how to write. I had to read much of the book over and over again, to simply figure out what in the heck he was saying. The intro says he spent 20 months writting this book, I am assuming it was for both books, but I wish he had invested at least 4 months and took a creative writing class.

Lets talk about the book for a while:
First the book is supposed to be about WMI scripting --- however, he spends several hundred pages talking about WMI, and yet never writing a script!!! He spent all that time using the WBEMTEST utility - which is the most miserable utility Microsoft ever invented. Then he says it is "not supported" --- however, I know for a fact that Microsfot "supports" ALL the software they include with their product. Dude, it is part of Windows --- of course it is supported!!!

He spends the first 150 pages talking about VBScript --- duh --- the book is supposed to be about WMI. One thing I really hate, is the way his tables go sideways! Yes that is right, I am sitting by the pool reading this book, and I have to turn the book sideways to look at a table. Not only that, some of the tables go ON AND ON for nearly a dozen pages --- in the middle of the chapter!!! In my mind, that qualifies as an appendix not a table! Oh, and where did the table come from in the first place? Microsoft's web site documentation. I know he did not get paid by the page, but it sure seems like it. Why else is the organization so poor.

Lets talk about the scripts --- they are missing in action. That is right, there are no scripts with the book. You have to go to his website and download them. Not very convienent when I am in mexico paying 5 dollars for 15 minutes to access the internet. When you do get them, you have to refer back to the book to see what they do, because he gave them stupid names like script 1.0.1.2 that is real helpful.

I am sorry, I do not want to rant and rave --- but I am really disappointed. Should you buy the book? Well if you need to learn some good stuff about wmi, and you are willing to put up with all the negatives, then the book will be useful. I guess, the question is how hard do you want to learn it?

Rating:
Summary: Unnecessarily Complicated
Review: I'll start by saying that there are are some very valuable chapters in this text and I'll be keeping the book; but it will never be a primary resource. I'll grant you that WMI is a complicated topic, but when you're goal is to produce a book designed to introduce you to WMI scripting, you should really find a way to present the information in a straightforward and uncomplicated manner. One problem with writing a how-to book on WMI scripting is that your work is inevitably compared against someone else's. The author of this book without question brings complete understanding and vast experience, but has presented (somewhat dryly) so much dense information in the way of origin, concept, theory, aspects, etc (and none of it presented in a graduating fashion), that someone looking at this title as an introduction and guide to WMI scripting will probably be turned off (you're at page 267 before any actual scripting starts). The required information a developer / scripter needs to understand to utilize WMI within their environment has already been shown by Microsoft's Scripting Guys in their free on-line WMI Scripting Primer (Microsoft Windows 2000 Scripting Guide) to be straightforward, uncomplicated, and easy to understand.

If you are interested enough in scripting to think of adding WMI to your development repertoire, then it stands to reason that you know how to script. Despite this, the author has chosen to include a remedial beginning scripting overview that takes up the first 118 pages. As with many titles that tack on an introduction to scripting, it will not leave the newly indoctrinated with a solid foundation. Once you move into the WMI section itself, the technical information and examples are quite often delivered in a way appropriate for product documentation, but difficult for a learning text. Take the introduction of MOF files as an example. The reader is only 25 pages into learning anything about WMI (you're in the history and overview section), and before you're taught how to even programmatically access the default environment, the author explains how to extend it with customized classes. 10 sentences to cover what a MOF file is, followed by 4.5 pages of a MOF file example. It also needs to be understood that this is a two part text. The author has written two books in this series, and this is the first of them. It is pointed out numerous times within the chapters that such and such is covered in the other text. Lastly, none of the SDKs, utilities, or scripts used in the text are provided. You need to download them from both the author's web site, as well as the URLs printed in the specific chapter's summary section.

That said, this title is worth the purchase for some of the reference tables and sections within it. Overviews of WMI SDK tools and how to leverage them, a guide to the WMI Query Language, and many of the (relatively lengthy) WMI extension script examples make this title a good advanced "reminder" reference. But if you're looking for a true introduction to WMI scripting, start with the Microsoft WMI Scripting Primer then focus on titles that provide administration using WMI before picking up this book.