HOWTO: Using ADO to Access Objects Through ADSI LDAP Provider

ID: Q187529

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Visual Basic Professional and Enterprise Editions for Windows, versions 5.0, 6.0
Microsoft Active Directory Service Interfaces, versions 2.0, 2.5
ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), versions 1.5, 2.0, 2.1 SP2

SUMMARY

The Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) provider implements OLE DB interfaces that allow you to use ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to access objects in LDAP compliant directories. You must create an ADO connection object and set its Provider property to "ADsDSOObject". You can specify any string, including "", as the connection string (first argument) of the ADO connection object's open method.

The connection object Execute method's CommandText (first object) is an LDAP query composed of four elements separated by semicolons, in the following format:


   <LDAP://server/adsidn>;ldapfilter;attributescsv;scope

where:

server is the name (or IP address) of the server hosting the directory.

adsidn is the distinguished name (DN) of the starting point for your query expressed ADsPath format with "/" separators and the root of the namespace to the left. You can also use an X.500 style attributed name format with the relative distinguished names separated by commas and the root of the name space to the right.

1dap filter is the LDAP filter string (see rfc2254).

attributescsv is a comma separated list of names of the attributes to be returned for each row in the recordset.

scope is either: base, onelevel, or subtree.

NOTE: rfc2253 specifies the LDAP syntaxes on which the ADSI LDAP syntax is based.

To return the ADsPath, class, and cn attributes of all the objects in all the recipient containers in an Exchange server, you can use the following CommandText (in URL format):


      LDAP:<//server/o=organization/ou=site/cn=recipients>;
         (objectClass=*);ADsPath,objectClass,cn;subtree"

or (in attributed name format):


     <LDAP://server/cn=recipients,ou=site,o=organization>, _
         (objectClass=*);ADsPath,objectClass;subtree

MORE INFORMATION

The following Visual Basic sample code illustrates this query:

Sample Code


  Dim conn As ADODB.Connection
      Dim rs As ADODB.Recordset

      Set conn = New ADODB.Connection
      conn.Provider = "ADSDSOObject"
      conn.Open "ADs Provider"

      Set rs = conn.Execute( _ 
            "<LDAP://server/o=organization/ou=site/cn=recipients>; _
            (objectClass=*);ADsPath,objectClass,cn;subtree")

      While Not rs.EOF
         Debug.Print rs.Fields(0).Value, rs.Fields(1).Value, _
               rs.Fields(2).Value
         rs.MoveNext
      Wend

      conn.Close

REFERENCES

For a listing and explanation of common LDAP RFCs, including RFC 2253 and RFC 2254, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q221606 Common LDAP RFCs

Additional query words: kbVBp500 kbSDKPlat kbADO kbADSI kbDSupport kbdse

Keywords : kbADO kbADSI kbVBp500 kbVBp600 kbGrpVBDB kbDSupport
Version : WINDOWS:1.5,2.0,2.1 SP2,5.0,6.0; winnt:2.0,2.5
Platform : WINDOWS winnt
Issue type : kbhowto