Jerry Lee Ford Jr. - VBscript Professional Projects

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003104025

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Dedication

To Alexander, William, Molly, and Mary.

Acknowledgments

There are a number of people who deserve a lot of credit for their hard work on this book. I especially want to thank Todd Jensen for working with me as the book's acquisitions editor on yet another writing project. I also want to thank the book's project editor, Alex Bilsky, as well as its copy editor, Ginny Kaczmarek, for their excellence. Finally, I wish to thank Zac Hester, the book's technical editor, who has now worked with me on four different books.

About the Author

Jerry Lee Ford, Jr., is an author, educator, and IT professional with 15 years of experience in information technology, including roles as an automation analyst, a technical manager, a technical support analyst, an automation engineer, and a security analyst. Jerry is an MCSE and has also earned Microsoft's MCP and MCP + Internet certifications. In addition, he has a master's degree in business administration from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Jerry is also the author of 11 other books, including Learn JavaScript in a Weekend, Learn VBScript in a Weekend, Microsoft Windows Shell Scripting and WSH Administrator's Guide, Microsoft WSH and VBScript for the Absolute Beginner, and Microsoft Windows XP Professional Administrator's Guide. He has over five years of experience as an adjunct instructor teaching networking courses in information technology. Jerry lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife, Mary, and their children, Alexander, William, and Molly.

The goal of this book is to provide programmers, power users, and system administrators who have a previous programming background with a project-oriented approach to learning the VBScript (Visual Basic Scripting) language. VBScript is a member of the Visual Basic family of programming languages that includes both Visual Basic and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).

VBScript is a scripting language that acts as a tool for rapid application development in a host of different operating environments. VBScript provides the ability to automate tasks on Windows operating systems using the WSH (Windows Script Host). The WSH provides VBScripts with access to Windows resources, such as the Windows file system, the desktop, the registry, and network resources. In addition, when combined with HTML and executed within Internet Explorer, VBScript allows the user to create interactive client-side Web content.

The book's opening chapters provide a complete review of VBScript, covering all the elements that make up this scripting language. The bulk of the book focuses on exploring the implementation of four scripting projects, each of which is based on a real-life scenario. In the first project, VBScript and the WSH are used to assist a small team of desktop engineers with the customization and deployment of new computers. The second project demonstrates how VBScript and the WSH can be used to assist a team of programmers analyzing reports generated by a collection of applications for which they are responsible. The third project builds upon the work performed in the second project by demonstrating how to establish a centralized management reporting station where the programmers can view summary reports based on data retrieved from distributed computers. The final project demonstrates how to use VBScript, the WSH, and Internet Explorer to create dynamic Web content that displays information extracted from data generated by the third project.

One of the powerful capabilities provided to VBScript by the WSH is the ability to execute any Windows command. This capability is exploited by the projects presented in this book. provides a description of the book's companion Web site, where copies of all the scripts presented by the book can be downloaded.