Chapter 27. Never the end
We’ve come to the end of this book, but it’s hardly the end of your PowerShell exploration. There’s a lot more in the shell to learn (hmm, perhaps an “Advanced” book is in order?), and based on what you’ve learned here, you’ll be able to teach yourself much of it (so much for the book idea, I guess). This short chapter will help point you in the right directions.
There’s a lot more that you can do in PowerShell. We’ve really only scratched the surface, although you should certainly have learned enough in this book to be very, very effective. Here are some of the other things you might want to explore:
. Create your own predefined views. There’s a pretty simple XML format for doing so, and the Update-FormatData command loads views into the shell once you’re done.
. Work with XML-formatted data, using PowerShell’s [xml] type.
. Access data in a database. This requires you to use a few raw .NET Framework classes, but there are simple, copy-and-paste patterns you can rely on to get the job done.
. Write internationalized scripts that can substitute strings in different languages. This is especially helpful if you have colleagues in other countries who don’t speak English as a first language.
. Access Component Object Model (COM) objects. This provides access to a wide range of functionality that’s been in Windows since pretty much the beginning.