Book Review: “Windows PowerShell Cookbook”
As PowerShell has grown up, the set of canonical texts required to support it has expanded as well. O’Reilly’s “Windows PowerShell Cookbook” is one of those books. Now in the second edition, WPC retains all the utility of the original book but adds new features and topics. The original version’s clean, easy-to-understand syntax and examples carry over into the second edition, allowing readers to use WPC as an all-purpose reference guide. If you have a specific question, just crack open the index, find the tool you need, and leave the book on your digital desktop for the next time.
Several changes to PowerShell, from v1 to v2, have increased the utility of the cookbook. Topics like remote access and management, or the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment simply didn’t exist in v1. They are covered in depth in this updated version, making it invaluable. If you’ve wanted to manage multiple remote servers in one easy to use environment, the ISE and remote access together are a perfect fit, and well explicated in the book.
The biggest miss, by far, in the latest version of the cookbook is the chapter on Active Directory. In PowerShell v1, AD cmdlets didn’t exist, and thus, manipulating items was incredibly tedious work through the ADSI provider. In v2, active-directory cmdlets exist for all common tasks, yet the cookbook mentions them only in passing (preferring to explain the dated ADSI ones) and recommends readers visit a website for further questions. It’s a serious miss, and one that will frustrate many systems administrators who perform tasks in AD each day.
Windows PowerShell Cookbook, in the end, still has gaps. In the first version, it was simply because the language was immature and certain features weren’t included. Now that PowerShell has hit 2.0, the language is robust and ready for a solid reference work. WPC gets 85% of the way there, and the primary gaps are now in documenting the numerous applications that build on top of PS. Now that Exchange, Active Directory, SQL, IIS and the System Center suite of Microsoft products use PowerShell, having a solid reference for systems administrators who use those apps may be necessary for a truly “comprehensive” work.