Monad (aka MSH) is Microsoft's new command line scripting technology. With new technologies comes a learning period, and thankfully for Monad, this book makes learning a whole lot easier! The book I am talking about is called Monad and was written by Andy Oakley for O'Reilly Publishing. The book is currently the only book available on Monad, and luckily the author has done a great job.

I skim/browse/read a fair amount of books, and in my experience, books on programming are usually a dry read. I expected the same from this book, but after going through the first chapter, I found myself hammering out the code samples on my laptop, trying things out as I went on. The book is very interactive, and has loads of usable code samples and in no time I was able to type out commands in Monad and get the results I was looking for. As you go through the samples and hands-on labs, you are bound to ask yourself "yeah but what if......" and in most cases your question is answered in the lab follow-ups.

The book contains 7 chapters and two appendixes. At a mere 206 pages, you might think this book doesn't offer much. Well let me be the first to tell you to squash that thought. This book is jam packed with information to get you using Monad quickly. Each chapter is hands-on with may real-world useable code samples that teach you how to use Monad. The great thing is that as you progress through the book, the later chapters build upon what you learned in previous chapters. The first two chapters start off with a basic introduction to Monad, where to get it, what it can be used for and some basic customization. After reading these two chapters, you will be able to perform a lot of day to day tasks, some that you may be using VBScript for already, faster and with much less code using MSH.

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 start to get into the more powerful scripting capabilities in Monad including interaction with .NET Framework, string manipulation and error handling, as well as, how to use .NET and COM with MSH. These chapters do a great deal in uncovering the real power of MSH when combined with other programming technologies. chapter 6 expands on the previous two by covering the interaction of Monad with WMI and the abilities that allows. Many Windows components and applications open themself up to WMI and allow for information retrival and configuration to be scripted. This chapter does an excellent job of showing you how to use WMI with Monad, again reducing the amount of code required. You can get the same information via VBS/WMI as you can with MSH/WMI, but MSH will do it with much less code.

Finally chapter 7 ends with practical uses for Monad, interacton with CMD.EXE and some good Monad "hacks" to improve its usability. By this chapter, you should be well on your way to managing your network with Monad and this chapter introduces you to some great tricks to get more out of Monad. The book is aimed at developers and system administrators. That said, the style of the book is suited to anyone wishing to learn Monad as well. The explanations and hands-on scenarios as well as the abundance of useful code samples will have you MSHing (did I just invent a word?) in no time. If you want to learn Monad now, this is the book for you.

Monad is here to stay, and will only become more and more powerful as it gets integrated into new technologies from Microsoft. The next generation of Exchange, currently called E12, will introduce even more capabilites into Monad. Today is the time to start learning Monad, and this is the book to start with!