VBScript - Uses

Uses

Although VBScript is a general-purpose scripting language, several particular areas of use are noteworthy. First, it is widely used among system administrators in the Microsoft environment. This situation may change with the promotion and increased use of Windows PowerShell. Second, VBScript is the scripting language for Quick Test Professional, a test automation tool. A third area to note is the adoption of VBScript as the internal scripting language for some embedded applications, such as industrial operator interfaces and human machine interfaces. The hierarchical DBMS InterSystems Cache (which has its roots in the language MUMPS) also supports an implementation of VBScript, Cache BASIC, for programming stored code.

This relatively widespread use of VBScript is not because of many special merits of VBScript - several useful features of the full Visual Basic, such as strong typing, extended error trapping and the ability to pass a variable number of parameters to a subroutine have been removed - but mainly because, apart from being easy to learn, royalties need not be paid to Microsoft by implementers as long as the VBScript trade mark is acknowledged. By contrast, when an organization licenses Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) from Microsoft - as companies such as Autodesk, StatSoft, Great Plains Accounting and Visio (subsequently acquired by Microsoft) have done - it is allowed to redistribute the full VBA code-writing and debugging environment with its product.