Customer Reviews

Microsoft® Windows® Scripting Self-Paced Learning Guide (Pro-Other)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

How many VBScript books have you picked up that completely skip explaining the Windows Script Host and VBScript environment? They immediately jump into having you write scripts without even explaining the scripting environment, something that is Crucial to learning VBScript. This is another of those books.

This book has no information on the WSH (Windows Script Host), objects or methods, when and why to use the various WSH objects and methods, and there is only haphazard information on syntax. You can't even find this information in the appendices.

The author takes you through writing VBScripts, almost from page one, and only gives the briefest of explanations of what you are doing. For example, in the second chapter of the book, you are presented with a multiline script that includes the following:

Set objWMIService=SetObject("winmgmts") _
& .ExecQuery _
("SELECT = FROM Win32_Process")

If you never worked with Windows Script Host or VBScript, would you have any idea what this is? Or why you are using it? The author gives a 2 sentence explanation, and then jumps right into something else.

If you are new to VBScript, and are looking for a book to teach you about VBScript and WSH, this book is not for you. If you are an experienced VBScript writer, you might find some tidbit of useful information in this book. This book, sadly, does not teach you VBScript, and would be of no real use to someone who already knows VBscript.

Don't buy it.

I struggled with how to start this review. How do you describe a book that attempts to teach scripting to (and I quote) networking consultants, network administrators, MCSEs or anyone familiar with "basic Windows Server administration" yet spends time telling you how to use Notepad to open a script file? How about making up your own name for script sections that no one in the industry will understand if you ever say it to them ("Worker information section" for example)? Worse yet, a book that attempts to teach you the basics of the language by using external COM object references from the very first script instead of solidifying the base language with the base language first?

After reading dozens of self-paced learning guides on scripting as well as designing and teaching my own course work on the subject, I have a good idea what will make someone new to a topic frustrated and confused. As an example, demonstrating a script on page 5 that reads from the registry using an external COM object followed by a long table on page 13 that lists registry locations where readers can pull such information as the Exchange 2000 domain user, but NEVER formally covering the object used to read from and write to the registry - is a great way to aggravate and alienate a student.

What readers new to VBScript and Windows scripting will never find in this book is a straightforward introduction to the language, coverage of the Windows Script Host (WSH) itself, or a good reference for the native objects commonly used for Windows scripting. A dedicated reader may find that the book does introduce them to scripting, but most will find that they will need to purchase a second book to fill in the missing pieces and/or to use as a language reference later on. The author obviously knows the topic, but fails to efficiently convey that information to his readers.

First off, let me say that I am an absolute beginner when it comes to writing scripts for the Microsoft Windows platform, but not a beginner to writing scripts for other platforms, such as Unix and Linux. I purchased this book because it advertised on the back cover that I could "learn how to automate Windows administration with practical, hands-on instruction from a Microsoft scripting expert." I briefly glanced through the book while at the bookstore and liked the author's approach to presenting a topic at the beginning of a chapter and then supplying "hands-on" lab exercises at the end of the chapter. That's the good. Now for the bad.

The book does not provide enough background information on a lot of topics, which means you'll need to get a second source for reference information. Some of the topics are not covered as thoroughly as they should have been. Two examples readily come to mind. The first is the Select..Case control structure. While the author does introduce you to the Select..Case control structure and gives an example, he totally neglects to explain how you would specify a default case that would be executed in the event none of the other cases matched. A more frustrating example is simply how to exit a script unconditionally. Sounds trivial, I know. Yet, experience has taught me there are times when it useful to abort a script unconditionally. For example, if you are automating the installation of an application and have placed code in the script to determine whether or not there is sufficient disk space available to perform the installation. If the code determines there is insuffucient disk space, then it might be appropriate to abort script execution. I could not find an example in the book that demonstrated how to do this.

In summary, other than the aforementioned issues, I did learn enough from the book to get started writing scripts for Windows. Additional information to fill in the gaps was obtained primarily from the devguru.com website, which I would recommend as a great reference on VBScript and WSH.

The highly varying marks for this book are not without reason to me. So I'll split this review in the good and the bad.

What's good about the book? The way VBScript is taught is excellent for sysadmins that really hate dry reading stuff and want to get to the action ASAP. Furthermore there are lots of useful code examples. Do take note that the book is focused on learning enough of VBScript to be able to copy, paste and edit sample scripts. I've used some of the exercises in training sessions and it works quite good.

Now the bad. First off, there are a number of mistakes in the code samples, additional files and exercises. I'd recommend the author to include a "build guide" for setting up an exercise environment in VMWare or Virtual PC and using that as a start-off point.

Next there's not enough detail on some very important things like using the WMI Tools (to have a look at the Properties and methods of WMI object classes) and other tools to get more into detail. Also some important scripting aspects, like error handling, are not covered in enough detail whereas these are very important. In the ADSI scripts for example you really need an ObjectExists sub or function. You need some additional books to really get into VBScript.

To round off, it's a useful book, which works quite nicely when you want to get down to business as fast as possible. However, it would have been much better with some additional, more in-depth, content, more proofing of the examples and a build guide for a setting in which to use the scripts. Also remember that you really need additional material when you want to delve deeper into VBScript.

This book is a double failure.

It fails as a learning guide by neglecting to discuss important basics necesary for all non-trivial scripting, (e.g. how to include a " character in a string) leaving the reader who departs even a little from the labs totally stranded.

It is also useless as a working reference. Nowhere will you find summaries of operators, data types, reserved words, syntax or useful functions. The cutesy chapter names make it hard to even find the long-winded descriptions of what you need a quick refresher on.

Don't get it.

I agree with some other reviewers that this is a a good book for more expert admins that want to start off right away. There are useful code examples to be productive right away.

In my opinion there's a lack of detail on some important topics and important scripting aspects.

But: like all professionals in the field we learned over the years to get a variety in material to do our jobs ;-)

If you want some basics on scripting, error handling an so on than I would recommend "The vbscript professional project book" from Premier Press. It is a very good starting point for scripting, other books are completing the information about this topic.

Rob Faber [CISSP, CEH, MCSE 2003]

This is the book to use to learn VBScript if you are a network administrator, or a consultant. If you are a "real developer" or if you are a web devleoper, then do not bother. I am in the first group. I have read / looked at several books on vbscript, but they were all too confusing. In many cases, they simply copied Microsoft's documentation --- which lets be honest, dude if I could read that stuff, then I would not be buying a book.

What do I like about the book. Well he starts immediately with things that will help me. The first script in the book shows how to list all the admin tools installed on the server. Secondly, I like his stories. The book is actually fun to read, I guess that is why one reviewer, said it was scripting for dummies. I for one, will admit I own several dummies books, and they are fun to read. I actually like Mr. Wilson's sense of humor.

Back to the book. The book is not comprehensive. But I do not want or need a comprehensive book on scripting. I need help automating my Windows network --- and this fits the bill nicely. The labs are awesome --- starting out step by step in the first labs, and later in the book, he makes you think --- but not so much you can not complete the lab. The CD that comes with the book has ALL the scripts in the book, as well as an electronic version of the book. I have copied that version to my laptop, and keep it with me for reference.

Buy the book. You will be glad you did.

This is THE book for learning VB Scripting

The book has labs and practice scripts that relates to real life scenarios.
It is written in a matter so it is easy to understand he concepts of scripting.
I can recomment this book for anyone that needs to learn VB Script. Both for advanced and beginners.

I wish this book had been out last year. There are a lot of good scripting books out there, but they all start from the beginning, open notepad and start programming. The vast majority of system admins do not learn scripting this way. They learn it by finding scripts on the web and 'making them work'.

This book starts out with load this script from the cd. 'This' is a script, these are the elements you have to have, these are 'nice to have' and here is how it works. The first lesson manipulates those elements so you see their importance and the second is what so many people already do, modify the script to make it do something else.

The book then begins to provide you with the tools to gather information, monitor and report. From there, it switches over into administration. The tone is friendly and conversational. It clarified things that I had picked up elsewhere but not fully understood until now.

It comes with a demo version of Primal Script which I use and enjoy. As a free alternative to notepad that does color context highlighting for VBScript, you can use http://www.crimsoneditor.com

I went thru the book and thought the lessons were good. The way the book disects every script as you read it is great for beginners. Ed's technical reveiwer(s) did him a disservice by not check every lab on the CD against what he had in print. Of the 40 labs 3 do not work at all. If you cut and paste from the book text you can get 3 more to work. So 6 out of 40 labs have issues. The chapter 15 labs are broke all the way around. You need to adjust most of the labs to get them to work in your environment and there is no discussion of this in the text. For a book on scripting, the debugging was average.