WSH and ADSI Administrative Scripting

Gerry O'Brien has been working with computers for over 14 years. He has over 5 years of experience in network administration using Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. He has worked with multiple domains using both NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 Active Directory in a WAN environment using PPTP connections. His programming experience started when he got hooked on programming with GW Basic and Quick Basic from the DOS days. He started Windows programming with Visual Basic 3 and has used VB for most of his programming tasks since then. Of course, the natural extension of VB was Visual Basic for Applications and VBScript, where he customized office applications and created Active Server Pages for various companies. Gerry presently works full-time as a facilitator with the Information Technology Institute (ITI), where he teaches HTML, project management, FrontPage, RDBMS theory, Microsoft Access, VBA, VBScript, and distributed application design with Visual Basic. He holds an MCP in Windows NT 4.0 and Visual Basic. He also has a part-time consulting company and serves as a beta tester for Microsoft Operating Systems and Visual Studio .NET.

(NOTE: Each chapter concludes with a Summary.)

Introduction.


1. Introduction to Scripting.


What Is Scripting? Scripting Languages in Depth. Various Types of Script Files. Script Host Environments. What Is Windows Script Host?



2. What's New in WSH 5.6?


Grouping Script Switches. Script Self-Documenting. Sharing the Environment. Accessing Standard Streams Programmatically. Spawned Processes in WSH 5.6. Accessing Command-Line named Arguments. WshNamed Objects. Remote Scripting. WshRemote Object. Execute Method. Accessing Active Directory Information with the CurrentDirectory _Property. Scripting Security.



3. Creating Scripts.


Tools for Creating Scripts. Creating Reusable Scripts. Linking Scripts. The WSH Object Model.



4. How to Use Your Scripts.


.wsf File Support. Drag-and-Drop Support in Files. Set Script Properties. Running Script Files from CScript.exe and WScript.exe.



5. Securing Your Scripts.


Accessing the File System with Malicious Code. Accessing Registries with Malicious Code. Scripting with the CryptoAPI Tools. Securing Scripts with Signing. Using Certificates to Sign Scripts. Establishing Trusts Within Scripts.



6. Introduction to ADSI.


The Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI).



7. ADSI Architecture.


ADSI Objects. Namespaces. ADSI Providers. ADSI Schema Model. Programming Language Support.



8. Using ADSI.


Binding to ADSI Objects.



9. Accessing Data with ADSI.


ADSI Properties and Attributes. Working with ADSI Objects and Their Properties. Property Cache. Single and Multiple Value Attributes. IADs and IDirectoryObject Interface. Accessing Attributes. Modifying Attributes. Accessing the Property Cache Directly with the IADsProperty _Interfaces. ADSI Attribute Syntax. Collections and Groups.



10. Enumerating ADSI Objects.


Enumeration.



11. Searching Active Directory.


Query Scope. Query Depth. Working with Large Resultsets. Searches. Dialects Used for Searching Active Directory. Processing Resultsets.



12. ADSI Security.


Authentication. Access Control. Creating a Security Descriptor Object. Enumerating ACLs on an ADSI Object.



13. WSH and the .NET Framework.


The .NET Common Language Runtime. Languages in .NET.



Appendix A. WSH Reference.


Objects. Properties. Methods. Events. XML Elements.



Appendix B. ADSI Reference.


Data Types. Constants. ADSI Error Codes.



Index.