LDAP Basics

Getting Help

No book or article will likely ever solve all of your programming problems. That is where online communities come into play. Instead of struggling with a particular problem for weeks all by yourself, why not ask for help in an online forum?

Both of us are quite active in the Microsoft LDAP programming community and enjoy helping others. We also enjoy the opportunity to learn about the interesting things you are trying to do and discussing scenarios and ideas that we had never considered. Both of us attribute the depth of our knowledge in this field to our participation in these forums. We could not have written this book without the experience gained from trying to answer so many of your questions!

Joe is usually found hanging on the Microsoft NNTP-based newsgroups, such as microsoft.public.adsi.general and microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet.security, to name a few. You can reach these newsgroups using an NNTP client such as Outlook Express, or via the web-based interface on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com).

Ryan runs the show on the ASP.NET forums in the directory services area. These forums are available on the Web at www.asp.net.

If you prefer a mailing list, both Joe and Ryan participate on the ADSI and Directory Services Yahoo! mailing list, along with a variety of other talented people. This list also has a useful files area and a search interface. Find it at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ADSIANDDirectoryServices.

Before you post, remember a few etiquette tips.

• Please do not contact us directly via email for troubleshooting questions. Although we love to hear from you, contacting us directly prevents the conversation from taking place in public and helping others in the future. Additionally, it deprives other experts of the chance to try to answer, and it may take you longer to get an answer if we are away.
• Please conduct research before you post. A simple search of the Web or newsgroups with Google or whatever search engine you prefer may reveal 30 previous answers to the same problem.
• Please be detailed in what you are trying to do and in what the environment is. Always provide a relevant code sample. Try to tailor it to the smallest possible amount of code that demonstrates the problem. Snippets cut and pasted from larger frameworks with random member variables scattered all over are difficult to interpret.

Also, do not forget about the book's web site. While we do not plan to host discussions on it, the site will contain the samples from the book in both C# and Visual Basic .NET and will eventually contain other articles as the platform continues to evolve.