Professional Windows® PowerShell

Chapter 13. COM Automation

Windows PowerShell is designed primarily to make use of the .NET Framework and its associated classes. However, it is going to take some time and presumably several versions of Windows PowerShell before all of a system will be exposed to Windows PowerShell as cmdlets. The Windows PowerShell team has suggested a period of 3 to 5 years for the transition to .NET and system coverage by cmdlets to be completed. Therefore, when using version 1 of Windows PowerShell and for some time afterward you are likely to want to (or have to) continue to make use of existing approaches, including the manipulation of COM objects. After all, even when there is a choice in a future version of Windows PowerShell, why should you always throw away your existing working code? The support for COM automation in Windows PowerShell means that you can leverage your existing knowledge of COM objects that are relevant to your needs.

In this chapter, therefore, I introduce you to working with COM objects from Windows PowerShell. While for some COM objects there are Windows PowerShell cmdlet equivalents, for many there are not. Well not yet anyway. If your existing COM-based code works well, you may want to postpone updating that code or writing new code.

NOTE

Not all COM objects are supported in Windows PowerShell version 1. For example, COM objects which are based on CDO (Exchange Collaboration Data Objects) are not supported in version 1.0.