WMI Book WMI, or Windows Management Instrumentation, offers a programming and scripting interface for managing Windows platforms. It consists of a large (extensible) collection of COM-based objects that model facets of the Windows operating system (e.g. files, network cards, disks, logs). In addition, it provides facilities to search for "objects" using an SQL-derived language (WQL), and an Event system for receiving callbacks when an WQL-defined filter is matched.
Although WMI is an excellent system, it suffers by having somewhat scanty
documentation; furthermore, most of the interesting parts of the SDK
documentation focus on C++ development. Given that one of the main
attractions of WMI is the ease with which it can be used from scripting
languages by systems administrators (many of whom will not know C++), this is
something of a limitation. Hence Ashley Meggitt (IT manager, Jesus College)
and myself decided to write a book about WMI squarely aimed at system
administrators, using VBScript as a scripting language. The book is published
by New Riders and is available from
most major distributors, such as
here at Amazon.co.uk.
Throughout the book, we have provided sample scripts to illustrate the discussion. Some of these scripts (particularly those towards the front of the book) are trivial and of dubious utility; most, however, have real-world applications. The scripts can be downloaded in a single bundle from the New Riders website; alternatively, individual scripts can be viewed and downloaded from the pages linked below.
Chapter 6 uses a Windows Scripting Component for generating HTML reports. This can be downloaded from here.