Sams Teach Yourself Windows Script Host in 21 Days

Thomas Fredell hits a home run with Teach Yourself Windows Scripting Host in 21 Days. This book tells you what you need to know to build valuable utilities with the Windows Script Host (WSH, formerly the Windows Scripting Host). He explains the WSH object model, how to write programs with it, and how to run those programs. The material on VBScript and JScript won't teach you the languages, but it provides enough information to clarify structure, syntax, and other basics for programmers who work with many languages at once.

The best parts of this book are the examples, written using an even mix of JScript and VBScript. Fredell provides explicit (and adaptable) programs that show how to use the WSH with Microsoft Office, Internet Information Server (IIS), and SQL Server, as well as for user administration tasks in Windows 98 and Windows NT 4. The book goes into great depth on the relationship between the WSH and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO)--a powerful connection that's not possible to simulate with shell scripting. The inclusion of scripts that manipulate Active Directory file systems will wow Windows 2000 users (and those who plan to be). --David Wall

Topics covered: Building utilities with Windows Script Host (WSH); VBScript and JScript; and using WSH with Office, Internet Information Server (IIS), and SQL Server.