Getting Help with ADSI

This chapter's examples show the most common features you will want to program using ADSI with Active Directory, but ADSI offers a lot more functionality. If you want to learn more about ADSI and Active Directory, I recommend that you review the ADSI information in the MSDN Library. Also, to make it easier to visualize the relationships among the objects in the Active Directory hierarchy, you can use the program named Active Directory Browser (adsvw.exe), which is included with the companion files. This program draws out the hierarchy of any directory service using ADSI and allows you to query and browse the objects and properties contained in a specific directory, as shown in Figure 13-9. This program is an invaluable tool for helping you discover the objects and attributes contained in Active Directory.

Figure 13-9: The Active Directory Browser program, which graphically displays the relationships and attributes of the objects contained in any directory that you can connect to using ADSI

LDP

The LDP tool, which is included in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit, provides a graphical, low-level interface for LDAP operations such as Bind , Search , Modify , and Delete . You can use LDP with any LDAP-compliant directory, such as Active Directory or the Exchange Server 5.5 directory. Figures 13-10 and 13-11 show the LDP tool working with Active Directory.

Figure 13-10: LDP at work, connecting to Active Directory

Figure 13-11: Using LDP to search for distribution lists in Active Directory

ADSI Edit

ADSI Edit is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that allows you low-level access to Active Directory by using ADSI interfaces. You can use this tool, shown in Figure 13-12, to browse and modify information in Active Directory.

Figure 13-12: ADSI Edit working with Active Directory