4.7 Summary

This chapter is the first to discuss WMI scripting. We thoroughly recommend that you practice this technology to achieve a better active knowledge of the WMI scripting API.

As we have seen, it is possible to instantiate CIM classes or real-world manageable entities (mapped on defined CIM classes) by using a moniker or a series of WMI scripting APIs. Moreover, the security can be set at different object levels of the WMI scripting API. Besides these two aspects, it is also possible to combine the WMI scripting API with WQL queries.

However, we didn't examine all the WMI scripting API capabilities. Throughout the various samples we mainly discovered how the object model is organized. There are many more things to discover. For instance, we must still discover how asynchronous WMI operations can be performed, how WMI integrates with ADSI, and how a WMI instance can be represented in XML. These techniques are explained in the following chapter.

Mastering the scripting possibilities of the WMI COM API is key to developing management scripts for a production environment. This is why we focus on the WMI COM object capabilities before discussing the application of this technology to the real world.