Journal droid_rage's Journal: Windows scriptability 2
Somebody posted a comment in a discussion about MS' plan to create a new command shell that really got to me.
Leave it to Windows "sysadmins" to get their MCSEs and then not bother to look at the single most important aspect of Windows 2k: Scriptability. Windows 2000 is almost 100% scriptable, the IIS metabase is 100% scriptable. The Active Directory is 100% scriptable.
No, VBScript isn't quite as easy as creating a batch script in bash, since it is object oriented and requires creating the objects before manipulating them, but it's really incredibly simple if you've even taken some fairly basic programming.
I work with these products every day. I write scripts for dumbass sysadmins on a regular basis. One of them came to me and asked me to stop writing scripts. He's worried that if they keep automating processes, they won't need him around anymore. Well, we've got 350 servers and 15 admins. He may be right.
Leave it to Windows "sysadmins" to get their MCSEs and then not bother to look at the single most important aspect of Windows 2k: Scriptability. Windows 2000 is almost 100% scriptable, the IIS metabase is 100% scriptable. The Active Directory is 100% scriptable.
No, VBScript isn't quite as easy as creating a batch script in bash, since it is object oriented and requires creating the objects before manipulating them, but it's really incredibly simple if you've even taken some fairly basic programming.
I work with these products every day. I write scripts for dumbass sysadmins on a regular basis. One of them came to me and asked me to stop writing scripts. He's worried that if they keep automating processes, they won't need him around anymore. Well, we've got 350 servers and 15 admins. He may be right.
On scriptability. (Score:2)
Didn't the IIS metabase go from point-and-clickable to scriptable after MS decided to run Hotmail on Windows? It seems like Hotmail was a real learning experience for MS. What i really want to ask is - is there a timeline somewhere showing when different parts of windows and related services became scriptable?
According to the latest news, it seems that MS has finally understood that pervasive scriptability is a requirement for running huge amounts of servers. The one major factor that made me move my professional career from Windows to Linux was the inadequate support for system level scripting.
Re:On scriptability. (Score:1)
Not sure about IIS. I think it was the same time, with the release of IIS5, but I'm not positive. FWIW, Exchange can also be scripted or queried in the exact way AD can. The Exchange 5.5 DB was the model for Active Directory (uses ESE database, rather than SQL, not sure why)...