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Using Group Policy and WMI with Enterprise Library

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The latest Enterprise Library information can be found at the Enterprise Library site.

Enterprise Library includes a Manageable Configuration Source. This allows you to use Group Policy and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to manage an Enterprise Library application. You do not need to write any application code to use these features.

Group Policy provides a centralized one-to-many management capability for Windows that allows administrators to define settings that apply to a group of computers, systems, services, or applications. Group Policy relies on the Active Directory service to manage the settings applied at run time to members of the Active Directory forest, domain, or subgroup. For more information about Group Policy, see Group Policy on MSDN.

Note

Do not use a password in a connection string with Group Policies; the password can be exposed in an unencrypted format. Although the password is encrypted in the configuration file, the configuration file information is used in an unencrypted format by group policies and could be exposed.

You can use WMI to receive information about systems and applications, to monitor and respond to events, and to control and manage systems and applications in an enterprise environment. You can use any WMI-aware management application to expose a running application's configuration. You can also update the exposed configuration of Enterprise Library through WMI. To learn about WMI, see About WMI on MSDN.

Note

WMI exposes configuration information in an unencrypted format. Sensitive information in the configuration file, such as passwords, will be exposed when using WMI namespace security. You can define access control lists (ACLs) on the WMI namespaces to restrict who can retrieve the WMI information. For more information about WMI namespace security, see Access to WMI Namespaces and Setting Namespace Security with the WMI Control (Windows) on MSDN.

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