Active Directory, 4th Edition

Chapter 21. Scripting with ADSI

This chapter covers the basics of ADSI and VBScript so that even inexperienced programmers and system administrators can understand how to write useful Active Directory scripts. In Chapter 23, we show you how to use ADO to search Active Directory and retrieve sets of records according to the search conditions that you impose. Other chapters take this knowledge and extend it so that you can manipulate other aspects of Active Directory, such as permissions and auditing (Chapter 25) and modifying the schema (Chapter 26). In Chapter 29, we make an introduction to the .NET Framework and programming Active Directory with it. In Chapter 30, we apply the .NET Framework skills to build a web application using ASP.NET to manage Active Directory objects. Finally, in Chapter 31 we discuss using PowerShell to manage Active Directory. Chapter 30 covers basic PowerShell constructs.

What Are All These Buzzwords?

First, let’s take a look at some of the underlying technologies that you’ll use when developing scripts.

ActiveX

ActiveX, the base component of a number of these technologies, enables software components to interact with one another in a networked environment, regardless of the language in which they were created. Think of ActiveX as the method developers use to specify objects that the rest of us then create and access with our scripts in whatever language we choose. Microsoft currently provides a number of hosts that run scripts to manipulate ActiveX objects ...