An ADSI Primer, Part 5: Using ADO to Script Fast ADSI Searches

Editor's note: This article is the fifth part of a 12-part series about Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI). The series started in the January 1999 issue. Refer to previous installments for definitions and background information.

Microsoft's ADO technology features fast algorithms that let you quickly scan for database objects that match certain criteria, conduct database searches, and retrieve the results of searches (i.e., result sets). These same fast algorithms also let you update the retrieved data and return it to the database. Because Microsoft created an ADO database connector for ADSI (i.e., the ADO OLE DB connector), you can use ADO's database query technology on valid ADSI providers, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and Novell Directory Services (NDS).

However, the ADO OLE DB connector is currently read-only, so many of the useful ADO methods for updating data aren't available. Until this situation changes, you can use ADO only for searching and retrieving. Despite the read-only limitation, using ADO technology is still a boon. Without it, you would have to recursively search a database for objects. . . .

<P>This does NOT tell me what I want. I need a script that will tell me the PROPER [NAMES] of all the objects, and all fields/attributes for those objects; i.e., adsuser.name, adsuser.description, etc. "name" and "description" are two field names for the 'user' object, for example. What are all the other AD object names, and what are the field names associated with the various AD objects? How do I get a list of all those? Also, how do I do "write.file" instead of
"wscript.echo;" i.e., to get the results to go to a file (without prompting me
to press "OK", like these scripts do)?</P>

Jeff Mason March 10, 2004

Finding the proper names of objects is not very easy. Doing a search of technet will help find the names - although I had significant trouble locating the names as well.
Writing to a file can be done two ways, programatically and using msdos:
Dim ts
Dim fso
Set fso = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
On Error Resume Next
fso.DeleteFile("C:\output.txt")
On Error Goto 0
Set ts = fso.OpenTextFile(strFileName,ForWriting,True) ' True means create the file
ts.WriteLine "Hello World"
ts.Close

OR you can run your file with cscript from the dow window:
cscript myscript.vbs > c:\output.txt
The cscript will make the echo's show up in text in msdos and the > c:\output.txt will write it out to the file.

Good Luck!

Anonymous User March 17, 2005 (Article Rating:

)

weak

Anonymous User August 16, 2005 (Article Rating:

)

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