Nope - I have tried to avoid using scripts to call scripts whenever possible. At this point, I only have two Kix scripts that have BAT front ends, and one that is a bat file. Everywhere that we use Kix for admin tasks, .KIX is associated with Kix32, so I just run "script" and script.kix executes with all args passed. Of course, this is only on admin systems and servers, not in general population.

My SWDIST Install command has BAT front end, because it assumes that no special tools are available on the computer where the software is being installed. The BAT file calls kix from the install root and simply passes the args (%*) to the kix script, which then parses them. The other one is KGen, which actually IS a .BAT file
 Code:
;@Echo Off
;kix32.exe "%~f0" %*
;Goto END
<kix script goes here>
;:END
Nearly all of my scripts are tokenized, so tricks like this one won't work everywhere. The point is - it should not be difficult to add ONE of the command-line suggestions to Kixtart to provide a fairly significant enhancement to the scripting engine.

I guess the other difference is that the casual user would use Kix for login scripts.. a more savvy user would extend Kix into their admin toolkit. I actually try to push the limits and have several full-blown enterprise applications written in Kix/KF. Many of these are freely available from my web site.

Some of the most widely deployed tools are
  • SWDIST - a software management system that provides command line and GUI tools to install any type of software, service pack, and patch to any Windows computer without the need for any software on the target systems. It supports automated maintenance, distributed installation (multi-server synchronization and identification of the nearest server), and full reporting. Only two BAT files here to avoid the need of prerequisite software.
  • tsadm - the Task Scheduler Admin tool, a KixForms GUI that allows simple management of Windows scheduled tasks, deployment of tasks to multiple systems, and copy/paste of tasks between systems.
  • SWDeploy - An application with two KixForms GUI tools and a Kix service that controls the staging and deployment of web-based applications. Developers drop updated code and a "process control file" onto a share. They can then use the Stage and Deploy tools to deploy their package to a development server to verify the package works as planned. The Software Assurance team then uses the Stage tool to prestage the deployment to QA servers. The Operations team receives the alert from the stage tool and uses the Deploy tool to perform the deployment to QA. If that works, the process is repeated for deployment to Production. Neither the QA or Operations team have direct access to the web servers - the deployment is done by the SWDeploy service, running on a server that has specific network rights and uses the appropriate account for each web environment.
  • MailSig - a suite of tools that create and manage email signatures, providing a standard signature format across the enterprise. The signature generator script uses a BAT to specify Kix, since none of the end-users have Kixtart installed, but the users that manage the various signatures (our largest client has about 14 different sigs across the enterprise) has Kix and KF installed on their workstation. The management tool uses KF.
  • Postprep Command Line (ppcl) - a command line version of the PostPrep GUI used for quick, automated generation of one to hundreds of .KIX or .UDF files. Our entire UDF library is post-prepped and posted to our web site nightly using this tool.
  • SendMail - a Kix-based Windows service that allows email to be sent from any application by simply dropping a formatted INI file into a folder. We use it internally to send mail from our web site, providing a layer of isolation between the web and mail systems.
  • FolderSync - a tool that runs on a scheduled basis and synchronizes folders from one server to another. (this will be posted to the Vault soon)
  • UniSynK - a kix-based Windows service that works with Unison to maintain synchronization between multiple servers. Up to 10 folder structures can be synchronized on each server. Works over LAN or WAN, and can detect and initiate a replication within 60 seconds of the source data being modified.
  • PerfMonManager - a suite of tools to manage Windows PerfMon logging. Allows the user to quickly create, modify, and remove perfmon attributes from logs, performs nightly log rotations, and restarts the log collection after reboots.
  • KGen - a tool that scans defined UDF library folders to generate a list of available UDFs, parses a Kix script, resolves UDF dependencies, generates a target script with all UDF dependencies included, and then (optionally) tokenizes the generated script, copies it to one or more target locations, and performs a sanity check on the finished script to assure that common syntax errors are avoided. It also creates an index of variables (function/line where defined, where first used), and a map of statement pairs so you can quickly identify malformed statements (if w/o endif, for example).
  • HelpDesk - a KixForms-based GUI tool with a client/server model that allows a help-desk technician to view common computer information, manage services, list and kill processes, manage scheduled tasks, view/set the PATH, and perform basic AD Admin tasks like unlock the user's account or reset their password. On a LAN, it communicates to the client with no special software, but on a WAN it can communicate to a special KF-based client (non-gui) using IP Sockets to improve performance. That socket-based client can be used with a command-line tool as well to perform quick queries and perform basic tasks. This client is also being deployed to servers in small datacenters to perform controlled shutdowns for site maintenance or power-failure response.
Most of these either accept command-line arguments or have management tools that do.

Glenn
_________________________
Actually I am a Rocket Scientist! \:D