Customer Reviews

Microsoft Windows Scripting with WMI: Self-Paced Learning Guide

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't like being so harsh, but I strongly advise you NOT purchase this book. My reason for this is the poor coverage of the material presented.

The first three chapters were fine. The author was building logically, presenting material in a logical fashion. He demonstrated some simple queries, and described them clearly. The examples were pretty basic, and served no signifcant purpose.

Chapter 4 is where the wheels started to come off (and continued through to chapter 6). With no explanation, or background material, terms and undocumented examples began to show up everywhere. By the time the author got to event queries, it was obvious this was a lost cause.

For example, page 70 of the book used an query example that included the additional clause "WITHIN 10". I skipped around through pages, checked the indexed (and non existant glossary), but couldn't find an explanation. Eventually a check of MSDN explained what it was.

The section describing 'associators' on page 83 and 'references of' on page 85 were ambigious. The code examples provided no clarity, nor explanation.

I'm an experienced developer and administrator with 17 years in system's level programming. I had picked up this book to help get my hands around the topic of WMI -- to assist our administrative staff managing DFS-Replication services.

After two days, I've given up on the text, and purchased another more substantive manual "Developing WMI Solutions: A Guide to Windows Management Instrumentation".

BTW: So as not to completely trash this book, it does provide an excellant CD. There are a terrific number of tools, sample source code and script templates. In addition, the CD includes an electronic version of the book, and an electronic copy of "Microsoft Windows Scripting Self-Paced Learning Guide". Also, the later chapters develop some more useful scripts. If you need a cook-book to drop in one of these, you may find it useful.

In my advice, you'd be better off purchasing something else.

Over the years, I have purchased at least 5 wmi books. These books fall into two categories: the ones that never seem to go beyond the basics of running simple wmi queries, and those that are so far advanced, as to be virtually meaningless to a mere mortal. Now comes this book. This book is well written, with loads of analogies. It breaks the subject of WMI in to small enough chunks of information (each chapter is around 25 pages or so) so you can sit down read the book, and then do re-inforce the material by doing the labs. The fact that the person who wrote the book is a consultant, means the labs have real world application. I have taken many of the scripts from the book, and with only a few small changes, made them perform usefull work for me on my network. High points of the book: excellent coverage of WMI event driven scripts, and associators of type of queries. This has open new horizons for my scripts. Low points of the book: the labs for chapter one are lame ... I do not get this one. Every other chapter has awesome labs, but somehow chapter one kind of missed out. There are labs for chapter one, they just are not all that interesting. Would I buy this book again? You bet. In fact, I purchased 10 copies for the other network administrators at my company! I liked it that well.

What a great book! I resolved a complex problem I had in less than 12 lines of code when I discovered the power of Associators on page 83. I have been using consumer events in other languages for many years, until I read Ed's book, I had no idea they could be used with WMI. This book is a very nice complement to chapters 8, 9 and 10 from his Microsoft Windows Scripting Self-Paced Learning Guide.

Although Ed's book is not a technical reference book (MSDN already provides syntax information), the appendixes provide all the key information required to search MSDN, SDK, CIM studio and other tools presented in the book. Rather than being focused on syntax and formal grammar, Ed's approach is to show IT PROs how to use WMI to resolve real life problems that need to be addressed on a daily basis. The CD contains many scripts that can be put to work with no or little modifications for your environment.

Ed's book goes further. It has a complete chapter on configuring and administering WMI, material which is typically not found in manuals but that are key for understanding and working with WMI.

Being a consultant, I consult the printed book on a regular basis and I have a copy of the electronic version on my laptop.

I recently attended a Microsoft sponsored workshop that was taught by the author of this book. I learned a great deal. If for nothing else, this book is worth purchasing to get a hold of the event consumer scripts. Important note: The author made the class aware that a line was missing in the event consumer script in both the print and companion CD versions.

To get the script to run, at the bottom of page 110 add the following line of code.

objfilter.EventNameSpace = "root\cimv2"

They were real good at keeping me up to date on the shipment and it arrived on time.

This book had everything I was looking for and is a good source of information.