Who Should Read This Book?

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Who Should Read This Book?

Unlike other titles, this book does not attempt to present many theories behind the technologies you are working with, but rather delves directly into working code segments that can save you countless hours through automation of redundant tasks .

The practical nature of this book targets an advanced- to expert-level audience comprised of system administrators, application developers, and, to a lesser extent, IT management. If you are new to administration, you may want to use this book in conjunction with the more conventional texts described in Appendix C, "Further Reading."

For the system administrator, this book provides the code that is required to automate the most common administrative tasks in Windows NT, Internet Information Server, LDAP directory implementations , Microsoft Exchange Server, and Windows 2000 Active Directory namespace infrastructures . If you are new to using Visual Basic, be sure to work through the exercises found in Chapter 2, "Making the Transition: Multi-Tier Development for System Administrators," to bring you up to speed.

For the application developer, this book provides the Visual Basic code that is required to perform system-level administrative functions using a relatively simple API. It is also well suited for Web developers; the author's COM-based approach allows code to be reused in VBScript, JavaScript, or any other language that supports automation.

For the IT manager, this book helps put into perspective what can and cannot be done programmatically when you are trying to formulate a strategy or solution for your customer's problem.

No matter which category you fall into, you will find a plethora of administrative examples that are ready to implement in your environment.

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