Developing WMI Solutions: A Guide to Windows Management Instrumentation [Paperback]

Craig Tunstall (Author), Gwyn Cole (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201616130 | ISBN-13: 978-0201616132 | Publication Date: November 22, 2002 | Edition: 1

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a powerful tool built into Windows which enables organizations to manage servers and user PCs connected to their networks. WMI brings the power of managing a Windows network to unprecedented levels. For example, through WMI an administrator can easily write a script that will identify what service packs have been installed on all the machines in the network. WMI is extremely complicated, however, and difficult to understand. This book is written to provide a thorough understanding of how WMI works, as well as being a handy reference to how to use WMI to its fullest potential. System administrators will learn to develop scripts through WMI to access and manipulate their network. Developers will learn how they can use and access the WMI through both the COM interface and the .NET framework.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Many applications written for Windows currently don’t harness the power of a systems management technology (like WMI); this is what drove us to write this book. We want developers to realize that making an application manageable is a key benefit, especially to system administrators. Once system administrators and IT support departments realize what can be done with WMI, they will start demanding that applications expose WMI management interfaces. Not only will system administrators by happy, but you’ll be able to harvest a wealth of information available from WMI when building your own management applications. The other side of the coin apart from making an application manageable is a ‘management application’. A management application is a program (like an MMC snap-in) or web interface that can interact with the system to gather, inspect and manipulate the systems functionality or configuration. We also want system administrators to realize what they can do in !

a system equipped with a technology like WMI and how they should go about automating routine tasks. For instance, a system administrator can easily write a script that will identify what Windows service packs have been installed on all the machines in the network.

From the Inside Flap

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is an impressive technology. WMI provides, for the first time, an integrated approach to hardware and software management for the Windows operating system. Developing WMI Solutions provides administrators and developers with the skills necessary to take advantage of the power of WMI with Windows 2000,XP, and .net Server.

Developing WMI Solutions starts with an overview of the concepts behind systems management. The authors then provide a synopsis of existing management architectures and an explanation of the architectural components of WMI and the tools provided by Microsoft for their use. Also included is a WMI scripting boot camp for administrators using samples in VBScript, plus a series of best practices that give scripts a professional edge. You will find thorough coverage of such topics as:

- The Common Information Model (CIM)
- Developing CIM extended schemas
- Management-application development using C++ and COM for WMI
- MMC snap-ins, including a tutorial-style chapter using C++ and COM
- WMI providers and the necessary C++ and COM skills needed to expose class schema
- Developing management applications using the .net Framework — the first comprehensive guide to the WMI classes in the System.Management namespace

Finally, developers will learn about the often undersold but extremely powerful high-performance event-tracing mechanism available in Windows, which allows developers to expose detailed information about operations in an application. Both a tutorial and a reference, Developing WMI Solutions is an essential companion for network administrators, software developers, and team leaders looking to become proficient with WMI.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 816 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (November 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201616130
• ISBN-13: 978-0201616132
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #503,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent For .NET Developers, October 12, 2004

By 

Jase T. Wolfe - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing WMI Solutions: A Guide to Windows Management Instrumentation (Paperback)

On the back cover, one bolded line sums up this book nicely: "...[this title explains] how easy it is to write powerful management applications thru WMI on the .NET platform". If you are an experienced enterprise application developer working on the .NET platform and interested in what WMI can do to replace legacy solutions such as SNMP, this book is an excellent choice. Just enough attention is given to the history of WBEM, the overview of the WMI/CIM environment, the elements of the SDK, and the query methodologies of WMI, before spending the remainder of the book creating a solution to an example scenario, that anyone ready to "take the plunge" will not be disappointed.

Another quote on the back cover, as well as within the introduction section, states that "...[this book] is an essential companion for network administrators, software developers and team leaders looking to become proficient with WMI". Well, one third of that is true. I can't image what network administrator would find this title beneficial, as network administrators leverage WMI in automation and data gathering scripts or within applications such as SMS 2003. This title is not only not a traditional reference for the individual elements of WMI, nowhere in the title does it even cover the scriptable aspects of WMI. As for team leaders, if the team leader needs and introduction and administrative overview of what WMI is and what WMI's capabilities are, again, this is not the right title. For those two users I would recommend starting with Microsoft's free on-line WMI Scripting Primer (Microsoft Windows 2000 Scripting Guide) as it is straightforward, uncomplicated, and easy to understand.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last! Something for overworked sysadmins, January 4, 2003

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Developing WMI Solutions: A Guide to Windows Management Instrumentation (Paperback)

A significant component of the Total Cost of Ownership of a network of personal computers is due to the myriad different pieces of hardware and software that these can contain; invariably from a slew of vendors. Integrating and managing the totality can be quite labour intensive for the systems administrator. Also too for the developer; whether she is writing the interface for a piece of software that others will use or if she is on the other side, and has to write code that runs that package and others.

Accordingly, Microsoft has pushed forward Windows Management Instrumentation. The book describes how to use WMI straightforwardly. You do need to know C++, COM and Active Template Library. No surprise there. Several sections also describe using the still new C# and .NET to write OO applications that easily connect to WMI. If you have not used C# and .NET, the book's coverage is concise enough to get you started. The authors treat a minimal subset that is enough for you to do useful work vis-a-vis WMI.

On the scripting aspect, the authors rightly give this careful coverage. Scripting files may not have the sexy appeal of a GUI-driven methodology. But in fact, for automated systems administration of many machines, they are usually far more important. Veterans of DOS and Unix batch file writing will see much of familiar approaches here.

Part of Microsoft's incentive for promoting WMI is to help it stay ahead of linux. The basic functionality of a browser and Microsoft Office are already in various linux applications. So at least in the network sphere, WMI helps Microsoft hold off linux. The authors do not discuss this, but if you read this book, you should keep it in mind; in the broader context of where the PC market is going.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best WMI book I have seen, June 13, 2005

By 

coffee_fan (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing WMI Solutions: A Guide to Windows Management Instrumentation (Paperback)

I am now on chapter 5, but this book really takes the reader by the hand into the world of WMI.

Chapter 2 covers previous management technologies like SNMP and DMI.

Chapter 3 describes WMI, its motivation and details about its implementation that are absent from any Microsoft documentation yet. Note that MSDN lately revamped its documentation, so it is much better now.

Chapter 4 does a tour of the CIM model and the tools the Microsoft WMI SDK provides. This is a nice tutorial for developers.

Chapter 5 introduces the user to the creation of CIM class schemas. The CIM model presented is a bit outdated as the DMTF CIM model is constantly changing. The reader should be aware of this in order to prevent confusion.

Overall, the book is very educational and still of very good value.

When I finish the book I will update my review.