Foreword

Alain Lissoir's first book, Understanding WMI Scripting, did a fine job of setting the foundation for system administrators who want to come to grips with WMI and comprehend where WMI might be usefully deployed to solve management problems.

This book is different, because Alain now attempts to bring the reader on a journey where he demonstrates how to put WMI into practice. His approach is exhaustive, yet while the sheer number of examples might be off-putting to the casual reader, they represent a huge treasure trove of code, which can be employed by the administrator who really wants to put WMI to work.

For me, the most interesting parts of the book are those that address security and applications. Windows is a great operating system, but no operating system is much good if it is insecure or doesn't do a good job of supporting applications. Manageability is an important part of applications, so it's great to see that Microsoft and independent software vendors have invested to build WMI providers for applications, and it is even better that these can be combined together in a secure manner. There is no doubt that you can expect to see more applications added to the set that supports WMI in the future, so think of this part of the book as your entr e to an area that will expand.

To repeat some comments I made in the foreword of Alain's previous book, I don't have much time for those who insist on recreating the wheel. I think you'll find that you can do much more than you realized to extract data from applications, understand what's really happening on your servers, and get real work done as you dip into the depth of knowledge and Alain's experience of real-world problems found here.

I know Alain has worked very hard to bring this book together and build on the strong foundation set in the first book. Practical and straightforward advice is always valuable and this book—even on a standalone basis—is an asset that any enterprise Windows administrator can learn from.

Enjoy!

Tony Redmond
Chief Technology Officer
HP Consulting and Integration