Active Directory, Second Edition

Migrating Your ADSI Scriptsfrom VBScript to VB

If you decide you need a GUI-based application instead of a web-based application, it is time to start thinking about coding in a different language. VB is an easy language with the capabilities of great complexity. The VB language itself is very similar to VBScript, so you can port code quickly from your existing scripts. However, there is so much that you can do with VB that the bewildering array of interfaces and methods can easily get confusing. The simplest solution to this is to get a book on VB. There are many dozens of books that already exist on the complexities of writing in VB, and we do not intend to provide an introduction here. If you are seriously considering writing in VB, your best option is to pick up a book on it.

This section covers what you need to do to write ADSI code with VB after having written ADSI code in VBScript. This includes a brief look at the major differences between VBScript and VB, the options that need to be set, and the Platform SDK, which you will need to compile your code. We also briefly cover a series of examples that are available from the O’Reilly web site. The notes that we present in this section are with respect to Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Version 6.0. However, these examples should also work with future versions of VB as well.

Platform Software Development Kit

To access the ADSI interfaces and libraries, you need to be able to reference the appropriate component of the Microsoft ...