Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Administration with Windows PowerShell™

Chapter 1. What Is Windows PowerShell?

Windows PowerShell is the extensible command-line interface shell and scripting language that provides a command-line environment for interactive exploration and administration of computers. In addition, it provides developers with an opportunity to script these commands, enabling them to be automated, scheduled, and run multiple times.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• A brief overview of command-line interfaces

• Prerequisites for installing PowerShell

• Installing PowerShell 2.0 CTP3.

Command-Line Interfaces versus Graphical User Interfaces

Before UNIX, Linux, and Windows surfaced in the information technology market, input media such as punched card and punched tape were used. All the input and instructions to the computer used command lines.

When UNIX and Linux were released, administrators started managing the operating system using command-line interfaces, which were also used by the day-to-day users and programmers to interact with the operating system.

UNIX and Linux are built on command-line interfaces, so there has always been administrative scripting and different shells, such as the Korn shell, the C shell, and the Bourne shell. Programming languages such as TCL and PERL were immediately available.

Originally, when Microsoft released MS-DOS, it was not used as a shell. It was entirely a standalone operating system. The initial and original Microsoft Windows release was a graphical shell that sat on top of the MS-DOS operating system. ...