Developing WMI Solutions (Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology) [Paperback]

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a powerful tool built into Windows which enables organizations to manage servers and user PCs connected to their networks. WMI brings the power of managing a Windows network to unprecedented levels. For example, through WMI an administrator can easily write a script that will identify what service packs have been installed on all the machines in the network. WMI is extremely complicated, however, and difficult to understand. This book is written to provide a thorough understanding of how WMI works, as well as being a handy reference to how to use WMI to its fullest potential. System administrators will learn to develop scripts through WMI to access and manipulate their network. Developers will learn how they can use and access the WMI through both the COM interface and the .NET framework.

Many applications written for Windows currently don’t harness the power of a systems management technology (like WMI); this is what drove us to write this book. We want developers to realize that making an application manageable is a key benefit, especially to system administrators. Once system administrators and IT support departments realize what can be done with WMI, they will start demanding that applications expose WMI management interfaces. Not only will system administrators by happy, but you’ll be able to harvest a wealth of information available from WMI when building your own management applications. The other side of the coin apart from making an application manageable is a ‘management application’. A management application is a program (like an MMC snap-in) or web interface that can interact with the system to gather, inspect and manipulate the systems functionality or configuration. We also want system administrators to realize what they can do in a system equipped with a technology like WMI and how they should go about automating routine tasks. For instance, a system administrator can easily write a script that will identify what Windows service packs have been installed on all the machines in the network.

"Craig and Gwyn bring their insight and experience with WMI to explain how easy it is to write powerful management applications through WMI on the .NET platform."

—Andy Cheung, Microsoft WMI Test Engineer

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is an impressive technology that provides, for the first time, an integrated approach to hardware and software management for the Windows operating system. Developing WMI Solutions gives administrators and developers the skills necessary to take advantage of the power of WMI with Windows 2000, XP, and .NET Server.

Developing WMI Solutions starts with an overview of the concepts behind systems management. The authors then provide a synopsis of existing management architectures, as well as an explanation of the architectural components of WMI and the tools provided by Microsoft for their use. Also included is a WMI scripting boot camp for administrators using samples in VBScript, plus a series of best practices that give scripts a professional edge.

You will find thorough coverage of such topics as:

The Common Information Model (CIM)

Developing CIM extended schemas

Management-application development using C++ and COM for WMI

MMC snap-in development using C++ and COM, presented as a tutorial

WMI providers and the necessary C++ and COM skills needed to expose class schema

Developing management applications using the .NET Framework—the first comprehensive guide to the WMI classes in the System.Management namespace

Finally, developers will learn about the often undersold but extremely powerful high-performance event-tracing mechanism available in Windows, which allows developers to expose detailed information about operations in an application.

The companion Web site, located at http://www.wbem.co.uk, includes the complete set of code examples found in the book, as well as updates and related articles.

Both a tutorial and a reference, Developing WMI Solutions is an essential companion for network administrators, software developers, and team leaders looking to become proficient with WMI.

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Craig Tunstall is a visiting lecturer and Ph.D. scholarship researcher at the University of Westminster in London, England. Prior to this, he was a senior Windows project leader in research and development at SDX Business Systems, a subsidiary of Lucent Technologies. Craig has been lecturing and doing research in the areas of WMI, network management, and distributed systems for the past three years.

Gwyn Cole is a senior software engineer with Avaya (formerly the Enterprise Networks Group of Lucent Technologies) working on Windows-based Unified Messaging products. Gwyn received his computer science degree from Staffordshire University in Stafford, England, and has worked in software development for seven years. His interests are in systems management and distributed computing, and he regularly speaks at software development forums.

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