Last week I talked to our network and infrastructure people, who were lamenting how Windows 2000 ships with almost no tools to help with Active Directory (AD) maintenance and administration. We pondered how strange it is to ship such a wonderful technology without the proper tools to maintain and administer it. Since Win2K shipped, we've written tools that help manage AD and other directory services. "What you really need to write," said my head network engineer, Chris George, "is an AD pruning and grafting tool." "You mean a Win32 the user could use to drag an organizational unit (OU) from one domain and drop it into another?" I asked. "Exactly, but Web-based," he replied.

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