Active Directory Cookbook

Chapter 1. Getting Started

Approach to the Book

If you are familiar with the O’Reilly Cookbook format that can be seen in other popular books, such as the Perl Cookbook, Java Cookbook, and DNS and BIND Cookbook, then the layout of this book will not be anything new to you. The book is composed of 18 chapters, each containing 10-30 recipes for performing a specific Active Directory task. Within each recipe are four sections: problem, solution, discussion, and see also. The problem section briefly describes the task the recipe focuses on. The solution section contains step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish the task. The discussion section contains detailed information about the problem or solution. The see also section contains references to additional sources of information that can be useful if you still need more information after reading the discussion. The see also section may reference other recipes, MS Knowledge Base (MS KB) (http://support.microsoft.com/) articles, or documentation from the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) (http://msdn.microsoft.com).

At Least Three Ways to Do It!

When I first began developing the content for the book, I struggled with how to capture the fact that you can do things multiple ways with Active Directory. You may be familiar with the famous Perl motto: There Is More Than One Way To Do It; well with Active Directory, there are often At Least Three Ways To Do It. You can perform a task with a graphical user interface (GUI), such as ADSI ...