Customer Reviews

Windows NT/2000 ADSI Scripting for System Administration

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you want to automate a lot of your NT server/domain administration tasks using LDAP/ADSI, you seriously want to consider getting this book. There are countless sample scripts that cover most if not all of the tasks you may automate and it opens up new possibilities of automating system management.

While the book may be intended for both system administrators and developers, having a good VB (or any programming) background helps in quickly digesting the material.

Nevertheless, the book is simple awsome and will be an excellent reference for all system scripting needs.

Well done.

If you run an NT or Windows 2000 shop and you want to build tailored VB or VBscript routines to manage your system, this is the book to get. The organization is superb and the examples are very clear. You do not need to be a VB wizard to take advantage of the advice. A great book that stands out from the crowd.

Basically this book takes the MSDN SDK on ADSI and provides examples of all the methods available for each interface. This provides the reader with many excellent code snippets that can be quickly applied. However it's light on the theory behind the COM calls and how to expand the code for further use. I was able to follow all the code fairly easily because I had already read Simon Robinson's book "Professional ADSI Programming- Active Directory Services Interface". My recommendation for those who really what to get a good understanding of ADSI and Windows 2000 that you read Robinson's book first. While some reviewers criticize Simon's book as being too wordy I found it very helpful. That being said this book will get you going relatively quickly...

This book is truly impressive. Over 700 pages of information presented in as clear of a fashion as the ADSI is going to let an author. An incredible amount of informational documentation about most of the ADSI processes, but never running off into useless stories about the authors childhood and such. Fully functional script examples appear on almost every page, with a hundred page appendix showing nothing but cut-and-paste code snippets. Code examples and documentation in the book cover not only creating ADSI programs in Visual Basic, but in VBScript / ASP as well. The one minor issue I found was that there are some references to, and examples for, ADSI 2.5 scripting that is not supported in version 2.5 of the ADSI. These out-of-date examples are very few and far between (I've only run into 3 out of hundreds), and having reviewed Microsoft's on-line documentation, it appears as though those items were going to be supported, and never made it to the released version. The code referenced in the book is easily downloaded from the publishers web site. The book isn't light reading, but the author presents it very well and you don't find yourself bored after a few pages. The time I have put into reading this book and working with the examples, was worth every minute. I find myself with multiple copies of this book so I can reference it from any of my working areas.

This is a book designed solely for the system administrator of an Active Directory system. I have used it to import, export, and manipulate AD to integrate it with our existing systems. Many of the tasks I have tried are already in the book, greatly simplifing administrative tasks.

This is not a book for system planners or the certification-happy. It is not meant to describe Directory Services systems or how to implement them. After all the 1500+ page technology mega books that have become so prevalent, it is refreshingly on topic and narrowly defined.

While it does not include a CD, most of the code samples are so short (15-20 lines0 a decent typist can enter them in a couple minutes.

This book by Thomas Eck provides examples to access and manipulate User Manager, modify or access Share properties on servers, and much more. I was particularly interested in these capabilities under Windows NT 4.0. The book provides direct examples for the specific task you're looking for without all the fluff. I've not found another book that gets right to the point with ADSI under VBS. I'm still searching for a book that provides this kind of material and direct presentation for VBS or WSH. I find this book a valuable weapon in my recent use of scripting and use of ADSI over the past few months.

I was hurled headlong into the world of ADSI recently when I was given the assignment to write Windows 2000 server build-scripts. I added several ADSI titles to my bookshelf. The Eck book is outstanding among them as an immediately useful and comprehensive reference. This book is heavy artillery for every W2K developer's arsenal. It is useful in the extreme!

I would just like to say how impressed I am with this book. I am up to my ears in VB/Vbscript development of Windows 2000 Active Directory utilities and programs and the book is an invaluable resource. I find the Microsoft help on ADSI to be fragmented, lacking in examples and not easy to use. The book with its many examples in VB and VBScript rather than C++ is very helpful. Highly recommended.

This book will prove invaluable to those who deploy multiple web sites in a redundant environments. If you are deploying web applications over mutliple servers and would like to get away from using the MMC for creating each and every web site then I would recommend getting this book. The book clearly explains how to write automated scripts that can be used to deploy web sites to a single server, or across an enterprise. Creating a web site includes multiple tasks such as FTP accounts, FTP virtual directories, Web site virtual directories and more. This book explains each facet clearly and you can pick and choose the parts that you want to sew together to create an automated system. Now, the only thing I'm wishing for is an ASP book that is written as well so I can create a web interface for the scripts I'm creating.

I am revising this review as I again return to this book. I am constantly surprised just how good this book continues to be. With all of the poorly written and just plain wrong computer books out there, this book continues to be a lifesaver.

When I need to find out how to do something in ADSI, I go to the index, within a couple of minutes I have a prototyped, mostly working application. This book is worth every penny I paid for it and then some.

This book has so many different examples that I went through and wrote a management application just by taking the code snippets from it and combing them to do what my application had to do.

It doesn't explain the differences between NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 implementations. But, it does cover most of the functionality built into ADSI. Also, there are some things that are built into ADSI that are counter-intuitive, but the author goes into a sufficient amout of detail to get you going on your way.

It is the best treatment of ADSI I have come across both from an administrators point of view and a developers.