Active Directory, Second Edition

Other Ways of Connecting and Retrieving Results

As mentioned earlier, there are a number of ways of authenticating an ADO connection to Active Directory. The simplest is the way outlined earlier using the Connection::Provider set with the username and password as second and third arguments:

Set objConn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
objConn.Provider = "ADSDSOObject"
objConn.Open "", _
             "CN=Administrator,CN=Users,dc=mycorp,dc=com", _ 
             "mypass"

Because ADO is designed for databases, it is often necessary to specify a number of other requirements when opening a connection. These include a different provider, a different server, or a specific database. All of these items can be set prior to opening the connection. However, none of these make a difference to the AD provider. If you wish to open a connection by setting these values in the ConnectionString property, then do so as shown in the following code:

Set objConn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
objConn.Provider = "ADSDSOObject":objConn.ConnectionString = _
  "DSN=;UID=CN=Administrator,CN=Users,dc=mycorp,dc=com;PWD=mypass"
objConn.Open

Semicolons separate the arguments, with the expected DataSourceName (DSN) specified as empty at the start of the string.

One important point: do not authenticate using both methods with the same connection—use one or the other. The following code uses both methods to illustrate what not to do:

Set objConn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") objConn.Provider = "ADSDSOObject" objConn.Open _ "DSN=;UID=CN=Administrator,CN=Users,dc=mycorp,dc=com;PWD=mypass", ...