"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.

0201616130B10072002

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 7 Ratings

Excellent For .NET Developers - 2004-10-12
Reviewer Rating:
On the back cover, one bolded line sums up this book nicely: "...[this title explains] how easy it is to write powerful management applications thru WMI on the .NET platform". If you are an experienced enterprise application developer working on the .NET platform and interested in what WMI can do to replace legacy solutions such as SNMP, this book is an excellent choice. Just enough attention is given to the history of WBEM, the overview of the WMI/CIM environment, the elements of the SDK, and the query methodologies of WMI, before spending the remainder of the book creating a solution to an example scenario, that anyone ready to "take the plunge" will not be disappointed.

Another quote on the back cover, as well as within the introduction section, states that "...[this book] is an essential companion for network administrators, software developers and team leaders looking to become proficient with WMI". Well, one third of that is true. I can't image what network administrator would find this title beneficial, as network administrators leverage WMI in automation and data gathering scripts or within applications such as SMS 2003. This title is not only not a traditional reference for the individual elements of WMI, nowhere in the title does it even cover the scriptable aspects of WMI. As for team leaders, if the team leader needs and introduction and administrative overview of what WMI is and what WMI's capabilities are, again, this is not the right title. For those two users I would recommend starting with Microsoft's free on-line WMI Scripting Primer (Microsoft Windows 2000 Scripting Guide) as it is straightforward, uncomplicated, and easy to understand.

caution - some assertions flat wrong - 2007-03-14
Reviewer Rating:
It still remains possible that this is the best book out there on WMI - the other reviews like it and the alternatives do not seem inspiring. Googling (( McBride death computer )) hints that one might not sell all that many copies of a book on WMI, compared to the Boom Days.

However I jumped right into the final chapter on ETW. Page 672 contains two assertions which I knew from previous hacking were flatly wrong. Googling (( WMI ERRATA )) is sufficient to return the book's home page, however the errata page contains no information, just an "under construction" as of 2007-march-13.

Plus which the general area of event tracing-logging is SIGNIFICANTLY updated in Windows Vista - there is no sign on this website of a revised edition, so actually the best book on WMI might be MSDN-online, which is of course free !

Best WMI book I have seen - 2005-06-13
Reviewer Rating:
I am now on chapter 5, but this book really takes the reader by the hand into the world of WMI.

Chapter 2 covers previous management technologies like SNMP and DMI.

Chapter 3 describes WMI, its motivation and details about its implementation that are absent from any Microsoft documentation yet. Note that MSDN lately revamped its documentation, so it is much better now.

Chapter 4 does a tour of the CIM model and the tools the Microsoft WMI SDK provides. This is a nice tutorial for developers.

Chapter 5 introduces the user to the creation of CIM class schemas. The CIM model presented is a bit outdated as the DMTF CIM model is constantly changing. The reader should be aware of this in order to prevent confusion.

Overall, the book is very educational and still of very good value.

When I finish the book I will update my review.

Best WMI Book Yet - 2003-03-09
Reviewer Rating:
Perhaps the best WMI book currently available. Includes source code for all samples.

WMI distilled - 2004-01-23
Reviewer Rating:
The authors do a great job of compiling all of the relavent specifications and standards related to WMI(WBEM). They filled in the missing pieces for my research and also provided several well written code examples which further helped to explain WMI. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who will be working with WMI.

Bq

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