What are the differences between "Windows wmic" and "Windows registry"?

Solution 1:

WMIC is an interface to WMI. WMI and the Registry serve similar purposes in different ways. The registry has been around for considerably longer than WMI. Both provide both system and application specific information, but due to adoption levels, WMI has considerably more system information than application information. Some of the information can be found in both, but nowhere near all. I would also add that while there are much easier ways to do it, you can technically get to the data in the registry via WMI while the reverse is not true.

One more significant difference between WMI and the registry is that WMI is much more than just a data source. It also acts as an interface to the Operating System. It exposes methods to both return data dynamically and to accomplish various tasks. For instance WMI can be used directly to create a new process.

Solution 2:

The registry is a database of all Windows' settings.

WMIC is the command-line interface to control Windows Management Instrumentation.

"WMI is Microsoft's implementation of the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and Common Information Model (CIM) standards from the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)."

Since this is also relevant:

Key features of WBEM technology include:
remote management of applications
management of several instances of an application as a single unit
standard interface for remote application management across different applications
decoupling of application management from the client 
"publishing" of key information about an application to other applications.

In other words, it is very similar in function to SNMP: Network management.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Registry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Management_Instrumentation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-Based_Enterprise_Management