Professional Adsi Programming

With Window 2000, a whole suite of new technology are on their way. Directories are at the core of Microsoft's attempt to unify access to different types of data, whether network resources, e-mail contacts or user privileges. ADSI is the set of interfaces you need to access any and all kinds of directory, and this book will show you how to use it to prepare your applications for the twenty first century. In this book, we start by looking at what ADSI is, and discuss the range of tasks it can be used for. We move on to discussing how to build ADSI clients to read and manipulate directory data, looking in particular at the Windows 2000 Active Directory, which makes network resources and information transparently and programmatically available to you. We also look at Exchange and IIS directories. When then take an in-depth look at searching directories and the security issues they raise. Once we've looked at what you can do from the client, we discuss using LDAP, ADSI's parent technology, and look at writing your own directory providers for ADSI clients. We finished the book with a look at the new technologies Windows 2000 introduces for preparing and deploying your directory aware applications. Who is this book for? ADSI relies on some understanding of COM, but can be programmed with any COM aware language. To get the most out of this book, you should be an experienced developer in either VB or VC++, although we won't assume you know both. Some knowledge of VBScript and ASP would be useful, but is not essential. This book is intended primarily for users of Windows 2000 but many of the techniques described are applicable to Windows NT 4 with ADSI 2.5 installed-those that aren't are clearly indicated. What does this book cover? • Using and understanding directories • Writing ADSI clients and providers • Active Directory, the Exchange directory and the IIS metabase • LDAP using Microsoft technologies • Searching and securing your directories • Writing MMC snap-ins • Using WMI and the new Windows installer