ADSI Object

An Active Directory object is a COM object that represents a part of the natural hierarchical structure of directory trees or directory services supplied over a network.

All object creation and management occurs within a parent Active Directory Container Object. Active Directory objects that support sub-objects or dependent objects are Active Directory host objects. Every Active Directory object has a parent container, except the top most ADSI Namespaces Object.

Active Directory objects can be identified by:

Relative name

The leaf name of the object, that distinguishes it from sibling directory entries.

Schema Class Name

The schema class name identifies the type of object this is ("user", "computer", "domain"). Browsing the ADSI Schema Class Object corresponding to this type always yields the current definition of the well-known relationships of this object: what objects can contain this object, whether this object is a container, what CLSID provides an implementation, what properties and interfaces it supports, etc.). Every Active Directory object has a single primary interface that can be used with QueryInterface to identify the schema class of the object (IID_IADsUser, IID_IADsComputer, IID_IADsDomain).

ADsPath

An Active Directory naming convention to uniquely identify an Active Directory object regardless of directory service implementation. ADsPath strings are COM display names. Bind to an ADsPath name using GetObject in Visual Basic and ADsGetObject in C++/C . To bind to an object when the ADsPath name is not know, use IADsNamespaces::get_DefaultContainer. Both the URL (preferred format) and the OLE format are supported by all providers. ProgIDs (programmatic identifiers) are case sensitive and must match the value registered in the registry exactly.

ADsPath - URL format

"ADs:" or "WinNT:" or "Your_ProgID://Your_Provider_Specific_String"

ADsPath - OLE format

"@ADs!" or "@WinNT!" or "@Your_ProgID!Your_Provider_Specific_String"

When to Implement

Implement ADSI Objects only when you are providing an Active Directory implementation for your directory service. Because every directory entry on a directory tree on your network is represented by an Active Directory object, choose a very "light-weight" representation for performance reasons.

See ADSI for Providers.

QuickInfo

  Windows NT: Use version 4.0 and later.

See Also

IADs