BOOK REVIEW: Microsoft PowerShell, VBScript and JScript Bible

Time for another book review. This time I will be reviewing Microsoft PowerShell, VBScript and JScript Bible available on amazon.com HERE.

I like the format of this book. Several sections provide code listings in VBScript and JScript to show how to complete various tasks.

All, if not most, of the content was written by James O'Neill. James has a very good blog (http://blogs.technet.com/jamesone/), and wrote an extensive PowerShell library for Hyper-V (http://www.codeplex.com/PSHyperv), so he definitely has some good practical experience with PowerShell.

In the end, I would recommend this book to anyone doing any kind of scripting. I think this is a good book for beginners as it is task-based, and if someone wants to gain experience with any of the scripting languages in this book, this is a good one-stop-shop reference guide.

My challenge for the authors would be to have all the code listing in all 3 scripting languages side-by-side, and, for example, have another section on what PowerShell can do, that the others can't like direct access to managed code.

BOOK REVIEW: Microsoft Windows PowerShell 2.0 Programming for the Absolute Beginner

I reviewed the first edition and gave it 5 stars on amazon.com. I still like the style used for the 2nd edition. The 2nd edition covers PowerShell 2.0, which is due to be released along with Windows 7 around October 2009.

The 2nd edition has about 40 pages more content.

I would only give 4 stars for this second edition. This book is based on the CTP2 release. A few major things that changed from CTP2 to CTP3 is that the *-Runspace cmdlets are now renamed to *-PsSession, and *-PsJob cmdlets have also been renamed to *-Job.

Some of the prerequisites for PowerShell v2 are also a bit unclear. If one is planning to use the new PowerShell remoting or the new PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), the book doesn't cover the prerequisites in enough detail.

Even with the above comments, I would still strongly recommend this book to a PowerShell beginner.

NOTE: Amazon.com has changed its review policy. I can only submit a review if I purchased the book from *them*. I typically buy my books from stores or chapters.ca.

Windows PowerShell Virtual User Group Meeting #10--NEW DATE

**Last week's meeting had to be cancelled at the last minute. I'm going to retry this for this coming Thursday. Sorry for any inconvenience.**

Windows PowerShell Virtual User Group Meeting #10
Time: May 14th, 2009 at 8PM EST (New York time)
Place: Online via Live Meeting 2007

-----------------------------------------------------------
To sign up:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Registration site: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=138442
Event Code: 138442
-----------------------------------------------------------

This is our tenth virtual event. Invited speakers that will talk about various
PowerShell-related topics: Bart De Smet (Microsoft), Sergei Anotonov (Microsoft), Glenn Sizemore.

Agenda (EST/New York time):
8:00PM-8:10PM: Introduction (Marco)
8:10PM-8:40PM: Glenn Sizemore
8:40PM-9:10PM: Sergei Antonov (Microsoft)
9:10PM-9:40PM: Bart De Smet (Microsoft)
9:40PM-9:50PM: Closing (Marco)

Speaker topics:
*Glenn Sizemore: NetApp administration using PowerShell (http://www.get-admin.com).
*Sergei Anotonov (Microsoft): IIS PowerShell Snap-in functionality (http://blogs.iis.net/sergeia/).
*Bart De Smet (Microsoft): Using LINQ from PowerShell (http://bartdesmet.net/blogs/bart/).

To join:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/winserver_usergroup/join?id=8GBZCB&role=attend&pw=8%5E-%5CzqX

Video:
Video will be delivered via the Microsoft Live Meeting client
Audio:
For attendees, audio will be delivered via the Internet using your computer's speakers. There
will not be a call-in number for this meeting.

Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:
1.Copy this address and paste into your web browser:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/winserver_usergroup/join
2.Copy and paste the required information:
Meeting ID: 8GBZCB
Entry Code: 8^-\zqX

PowerShell Terminology: Loosely integrated products

I recently started a small series of posts on PowerShell terminology.  In this post, I will discuss what I like to call “loosely integrated products”.  Briefly, I use this term when I talk about how different Microsoft server products implement their support for PowerShell.

In the case of loosely integrated products, these products don’t provide full PowerShell support.  Unlike some server products, with a loosely integrated product, not every task that can be accomplished via the product’s administration user interface can be accomplished with the use of a cmdlet developed by the product team itself.

These are example of Microsoft products that I consider to be loosely integrated:

• System Center Operations Manager 2007.
• Internet Information Services 7.0.
• SQL Server 2008.

In the above examples, the product team ships the product with a PowerShell snapin (except the IIS7 must be downloaded separately).

In the case of Operations Manager 2007, for example, the product provides a customized PowerShell console named “Command Shell” (renamed to “Operations Manager Shell” as of Operations Manager 2007 R2).  What the product team has done is used the Operations Manager SDK managed assembly and created a limited number of cmdlets.  So the cmdlets are officially supported, but you cannot accomplish everything from within PowerShell that can be done from the UI.  Furthermore, because of the incomplete cmdlet coverage, the UI wizards don’t provide similar functionality to the Exchange 2007 UI whereas when a task is done, the underlying PowerShell code used is not presented.

Hopefully the next version of Operations Manager (maybe in 2012) will provide more complete PowerShell support, which can mean a major rewriting of the user interface.

I’m not going to go into detail about IIS7 and SQL Server 2008, unless a comment is left asking me to discuss them in detail.

So the path to manage these applications is:

PowerShell->.NET assembly or SDK->Application.

I will cover tightly integrated products soon.

Managing OpsMgr using a mobile phone: RoveIT Mobile Admin

RoveIT has a product called Mobile Admin that you can read about HERE.

They are putting on a free webcast this coming April 29th at 11AM EDT.  You can register for the webcast HERE.

I’m looking forward to inviting RoveIT to my PowerShell user group possibly in June to talk about how they are using PowerShell in their products.

Windows PowerShell Virtual User Group Meeting #10--UPDATED

Windows PowerShell Virtual User Group Meeting #10
Time: May 7th, 2009 at 8PM EST (New York time)
Place: Online via Live Meeting 2007

-----------------------------------------------------------
To sign up:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Registration site: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=137921
Event Code: 137921
-----------------------------------------------------------

This is our tenth virtual event. Invited speakers that will talk about various
PowerShell-related topics: Bart De Smet (Microsoft), Sergei Anotonov (Microsoft), Glenn Sizemore.

Agenda (EST/New York time):
8:00PM-8:10PM: Introduction (Marco)
8:10PM-8:40PM: Glenn Sizemore
8:40PM-9:10PM: Sergei Antonov (Microsoft)
9:10PM-9:40PM: Bart De Smet (Microsoft)
9:40PM-9:50PM: Closing (Marco)

Speaker topics:
*Glenn Sizemore: NetApp administration using PowerShell (http://www.get-admin.com).
*Sergei Anotonov (Microsoft): IIS PowerShell Snap-in functionality (http://blogs.iis.net/sergeia/).
*Bart De Smet (Microsoft): Using LINQ from PowerShell (http://bartdesmet.net/blogs/bart/).

To join:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/winserver_usergroup/join?id=4FB8CN&role=attend&pw=8%5E-%5CzqX

Video:
Video will be delivered via the Microsoft Live Meeting client
Audio:
For attendees, audio will be delivered via the Internet using your computer's speakers. There
will not be a call-in number for this meeting.

Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:
1.Copy this address and paste into your web browser:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/winserver_usergroup/join
2.Copy and paste the required information:
Meeting ID: 4FB8CN
Entry Code: 8^-\zqX

New Book: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administration with Windows PowerShell

Wrox has a book on SQL Server 2008 and PowerShell HERE.  The book is due June 2009.

I just noticed that they have recently made the scripts from the book available for download.

The zip file contains: 76 .ps1 scripts, 26 .sql scripts, 2 .xml files, 1 .bat file, and 3 .txt files.  I’ve not looked through the scripts, but to include over 100 PowerShell and SQL scripts is super cool.

I can’t wait to get my hands on the book and review it…

[Edit: I originally reported 107 .ps1 scripts, but I was wrong.]