I am glad that Richard Siddaway decided to sit down and write a book on WMI. I have had the privilege of working with Richard over the last several years since becoming the Microsoft Scripting Guy, and I have long been impressed by his technical prowess. Whether Richard is speaking at a user group or conference or writing a blog article, it does not take long before the topic of WMI crops up. When I am planning a guest series of articles for the Hey Scripting Guy! Blog, Richard is the first person I turn to if the subject is WMI. In short, Richard is the perfect person to write this book.

The book is not just about WMI. Richard begins with an overview of Windows PowerShell technology. In fact, the “Using PowerShell” chapter is an excellent overview of Windows PowerShell. In less than 40 pages he hits all the highlights—functions, modules, PSDrives, aliases, remoting, and jobs. But it is not simply a fly-by at 30,000 feet; he gets down to the nitty-gritty, boils down essential information, and surfaces a number of potential gotchas. Even if you already know Windows PowerShell, this chapter is worth a look; if you don’t know Windows PowerShell, you should read this chapter a couple of times so you don’t have problems with the remainder of the book.

WMI can be complicated—I know, I wrote a book on the subject for Microsoft Press a few years ago. Luckily, Richard has devoted an entire chapter to discussing not only the basics of WMI, but some of the more advanced concepts as well. I love his WMI documentation script in chapter 3. Of course, one of the nice things about WMI is that it is self-describing, which means that it is possible to write scripts to discover information about WMI. Well, now you do not need to write those scripts yourself, because Richard has done it for you.

But if the book were all esoteric academic minutiae, it would be of limited practical value to network administrators and to consultants in the field who are attempting to use this rather difficult technology to solve real world problems. Luckily, Richard lives in the real world and his book quickly begins to produce real value. His section on WMI in the enterprise covers system documentation, working with disk subsystems, the registry, and more.

Windows PowerShell is a powerful, cool technology. WMI is a powerful, cool technology. When you combine the two you have a flexible and powerful solution. When Richard Siddaway is the author of the book—you have an unbeatable combination. Buy this book! You will thank me later.

Ed Wilson, MCSE, MCSD
Microsoft Scripting Guy
Author of
Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices