I neglected to mention that I'm also interested in scripting because I've been hearing about Powershell in Exchange 2007. I'm an Exchange admin and I'm here at Exchange Connections in Las Vegas and that is one of the big pluses of Exchange 2007. Thanks again everyone and I feel much better moving forward.
I similarly got to a point where I realized I couldn't practically avoid scripting any longer. I looked at a few books, including Robbie's AD Cookbook. Eventually I have become a pretty fair scripter in _vbscript_ and can work my way around jscript with only minimal pain. Here are a couple of things I learned, though.
1) _vbscript_ is nice because from Win2K and up, it's supported out of the box in WSH. No interpreter to load, and no compiling necessary. It does have it's limitations, to be sure, but it is fairly easy to learn. An advantage over compiling a perl script is if you are out in the field with a script you need, and it doesn't work on the box you need it for, you can open it up in notepad and fix it. This happens (for me anyway) more than you might imagine.
2) I can't remember all the stuff like Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting .FileSystemObject") and so on, or the set of lines to write to text files, etc. So like any good web programmer, I have accumulated a folder of example scripts that do certain things. i.e. parse a csv file, write a log file, find various AD attributes, manipulate msi databases, etc. If I don't have a set of code to do something, I can easily find it out there on the web and adapt it. Almost everything I've written started out as something else – including plagiarizing my own scripts.
3) The Windows Platform Software Development Kit is invaluable. There is a scripting reference to all the methods, functions, etc and when I am charting new territory, I have it open all the time. All the ADSI methods, objects, functions, and properties are in there too. The SDK is freely downloadable from Microsoft. http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/XPSP2FULLInstall.htm
4) The Microsoft Scripting Guys have lots of cool stuff on their site. The WMI Scriptomatic 2 is awesome for showing how to do things. Even if you are not doing WMI but rather AD, it shows you how to create and use objects and query properties. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/default.mspx
5) If you don't have a good tool for scripting, get one. There are several, and I think that the free Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Express will do _vbscript_. I know it does hta files. Autocomplete is another invaluable tool once you learn to use it, for all but the most prolific scripters (like joe I imagine J )
6) Consider looking at HTA (HTML Application) files. They are HTML, so familiar if you know any web coding, but they don't have the limitations IE puts on htm files – i.e. you can access the file system etc. They enable you to harness a web interface to use in your scripts. A lot of recent Microsoft stuff is on HTA now.
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Rich Milburn
MCSE, Microsoft MVP - Directory Services
Sr Network Analyst, Field Platform Development
Applebee's International, Inc.
4551 W. 107th St
Overland Park , KS 66207
913-967-2819
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"I love the smell of red herrings in the morning" - anonymous
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Stu Packett
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 9:00 AM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: [ActiveDir] Beginner's Book on Scripting - WSH or _vbscript_?
Hello everyone. After reading through a lot of the posts on this mailing list, I realize I could make my job easier if I knew how to script. I have no experience in scripting, but would like to know what books do you recommend as a beginner's book on scripting? Also, I don't really know the difference between WSH and _vbscript_, so if anyone could explain that, I'd appreciate that. After browsing through Amazon, I saw several books on WSH and _vbscript_, but don't know where I should focus on. I'm also open to computer based training (CBT) videos of any exist. Thanks in advance.
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