ADSI CDO Programming with ASP (Programmer to Programmer)

Friedlitz, Mikael; Mondor, Todd; Freidlitz, Mikael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1861001908 ISBN 13: 9781861001900

Publisher: WROX Press Ltd, 1999

The explosion of the Internet has redefined networking. What was a strong proprietary networking world has conformed to a rapid race to optimize future networks and provide compatibility to today's and yesterday's legacy systems. The release rate of new technology has tripled in development. The new technologies provide many solutions and options for customers and clients alike. Client expectations and functionality has exponentially increased. All these benefits of growth leaves the customer and Solution Provider trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Two technologies from Microsoft collectively ease the client and solutions providers decision: Microsoft Active Directory Service Interface (ADSI) and Microsoft Collaborative Data Objects (CDO). The combination of ADSI and CDO provides the glue that allows easy pasting of any companies' puzzled networks for yesterday, today and tomorrow. This book is geared towards the professional web developer, consultant,solution provider, or network professional. It is also ideal for system administrators with a basic knowledge of web scripting.

Review:

This is an essential book for Microsoft programming houses but because ADSI is Microsoft specific (being based on COM) it isn't particularly relevant to anyone else. In fact, to read this book you really need to know a lot about VBSCript, ASP, Exchange Server 5.5 and IIS 4. If you know these you'll know NT 4 which you also need.

The book majors on demonstrating how to provide messaging, calendering and scheduling functions via Web page interfaces, which puts it firmly in the corporate developer arena.

The early part of the book uses straightforward projects to show how the various technologies are linked to create network applications. After this it moves heavily into ways to implement security and authenticate users of these applications--an area in which NT struggles somewhat.

There's a passing nod at LDAP, but the authors are hamstrung by the fact that NT 5/Windows 2000 is yet to be unleashed. No doubt there will be an updated version when it ships.

Overall, this is a complex and detailed book covering Microsoft's increasingly complex network enabled software technologies. It's hard work, but ultimately very rewarding.