Use the Like Operator to Simplify Your WQL Queries

re: Use the Like Operator to Simplify Your WQL Queries

Ed Wilson — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:54:14 GMT

@Robin I am glad the post helped you. Thank you so much for the feedback.

re: Use the Like Operator to Simplify Your WQL Queries

Robin — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:56:19 GMT

I am glad you posted this information. I was completely stuck with my scripts, I could not get the syntax right until I saw your article. Thanks

re: Use the Like Operator to Simplify Your WQL Queries

Ed Wilson — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:04:09 GMT

@K_Schulte Yes, the syntax is actually called WQL --- even looks like SQL. Yes, it would be nice to have regular expressions, but WQL does not have the support. What you can do is run the WQL query, and then pipeline the results to a Where-Object and THERE you can use the Regex.

re: Use the Like Operator to Simplify Your WQL Queries

K_Schulte — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:09:25 GMT

Hi Ed,

this is pretty much like SQL! And it is undoubtfully a feature to remember!

I would go for having regular expressions to extend the possibilities.

A match operator would have been great!

Klaus.

re: Use the Like Operator to Simplify Your WQL Queries

IamMred — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:59:56 GMT

@JRV I am glad my posting got you thinking ... that is the point of a good blog post (at least in my mind). Yes, there are still a few WMI classes that do not seem to properly implement the wild card characters, but they are largely the exception ... Something I have not done ... that you might want to do ... is to do a literal filter, and a wild card filter ... and pipe the results to measure-object to see the performance difference. You will need to reboot between tests, to eliminate any caching ... In fact, I think I will write an article about that later.

re: Use the Like Operator to Simplify Your WQL Queries

jrv — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 13:33:24 GMT

Excellent article Ed. I have never paid much attention to the match patterens other than the %. Your article made me realize that I should not have ignored these pattern tools. Unfortinately, way back whne, the pattenrs did not work reliably and I never thought to revisit them . I will now.

Thanks.