Relationship Between ADSI and Active Directory

People often confuse ADSI and Active Directory (which is understandable given their names), so being clear about the relationship between the two technologies is important because they are completely independent. We know already that ADSI can work with any directory service, thus it is not dependent on Active Directory. However, the reverse is also true: Active Directory does not depend on ADSI for programmatic access, as our LDAP sample at the start of the chapter proves. That sample uses the basic LDAP API to communicate with Active Directory.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's documentation in this area is not helpful. Since ADSI is a technology that's separate from Active Directory, its documentation is rather generic to any directory service. The Active Directory documentation, particularly material in the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit, often forgets that ADSI exists and uses LDAP terms and tools based on the LDAP API. Neither is wrong, but this mix of tools and terminology can cause hours of frustration for developers searching for answers.