Smart guy Don Jones has a good blog entry where he discusses ABSTRACTIONs with the question, "Do I need .NET, WMI, COM, and all that to use PowerShell?" 

  • I agree that the correct abstraction for users (admins, etc)  is Cmdlets (and Providers [Don didn't mention this but he should have]).
  • Getting full cmdlet coverage what I call "digging ourselves out of a 30 year hole".
  • PS provides access to lower level abstractions (.Net, COM, WMI, ADO, ADSI, XML, text-parsing, etc).
  • PS V2 allows you to write Cmdlets using PS.
  • PS V2 supports Modules which make it easy to share PS Scripts between users.

ERGO:  PS V2 enables the community to create and share the correct user abstractions so you don't have to wait for MSFT.

NOTE: Even when MSFT provides full cmdlet coverage - you'll still need to know which cmdlets to use and how to stich them together to solve your specific problem.

This is why I tell everyone that ALL ADMINS NEED TO BE ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN THE COMMUNITY. 

  1. You need to look to the community for the solutions for your problems. 
  2. When you have a question, ask that question in a community forum.  Your question and the answer will get indexed by the search engines and help the next hundred people that have the same question.
  3. Don't just be a freeloader :-) - help the community.  When you figure something out - you need to share it with a newsgroup post or a blog. 
    • I'm sure that most of you are were all of us were a few years ago and are active readers but not posters thinking that no one would be interested in your work.  If that describes you - you are wrong. 
    • We can all learn from each other. 
    • JUST DO IT.  The next blog entry is easier than the last one so make a commitment to start a blog and post a few entries. 

What's the best way to start with the community?     If you haven't already bookmarked http://powershellcommunity.org/ - do it now. 

Cheers! 

Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Windows Management Partner Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at:    http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell
Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at:  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx