[ActiveDir] Slightly OT: AD Scripting question - ADO query and "description" field

[Fuller, Stuart]

To the scripting gurus:

 

This one is kind of driving me nuts so any clarification on why this happens would be greatly appreciated.

 

I recently created a script for one of our agency OU admins that queried the AD for their workstations and returned name, distinguished name, description, and some operating system details.  The guts of the script are shown below.   What I found is that "description" is what I think is a multi-variate field and the line "strDescrip = objRecordSet.Fields("description").Value" barks at me.  WSH returns "Type mismatch code 800A000D" error.

 

I got around this by shimming in a call back to the original object and adding in a return of ADSpath to the ADO query.  I set the description string via a GetObject call and I don't get any errors - "strDescrip = GetObject(strADSPath).description".

 

My questions to the scripting gurus in the group are:

 

1. When doing an ADO query, how to you handle things that return arrays or multi-variate attributes?

2. Is there something within the "objRecordSet.Fields..." bit that you can turn on to force a single value or pick a value from an returned multi-variate or array??

3. Why does an return from an ADO query be any different than a "GetObject" return?  Or in other words, why should description bark in an ADO query but be fine in a normal GetObject?

 

Thanks,

Stuart Fuller

Sometimes cheesy scripting person

State of Montana

 

 

===============ADO query script ==============

Const ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE = 2
Set objConnection = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Set objCommand = CreateObject("ADODB.Command")
objConnection.Provider = "ADsDSOObject"
objConnection.Open "Active Directory Provider"
Set objCOmmand.ActiveConnection = objConnection
objCommand.CommandText = _
"Select Name, distinguishedName, description, operatingSystem, operatingSystemServicePack, operatingSystemVersion from 'LDAP://ou=SomeOU,dc=ChildDomain,dc=RootDomain,dc=Root' " _
& "where objectClass='computer'"
objCommand.Properties("Page Size") = 2000
objCommand.Properties("Timeout") = 60
objCommand.Properties("Searchscope") = ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE
objCommand.Properties("Cache Results") = False
Set objRecordSet = objCommand.Execute
objRecordSet.MoveFirst
Do Until objRecordSet.EOF
 strName = objRecordSet.Fields("Name").Value
 strDescrip = objRecordSet.Fields("description").Value
 strOS = objRecordSet.Fields("operatingSystem").Value
 strOSV = objRecordSet.Fields("operatingSystemVersion").Value
 strOSSP = objRecordSet.Fields("operatingSystemServicePack").Value
 strLocation = objRecordSet.Fields("distinguishedName").Value
 fileTxt.WriteLine(strName & "," & strDescrip & "," & strOS & "," & strOSV & "," & strOSSP & "," & strLocation)
objRecordSet.MoveNext
Loop

wscript.echo "DONE"

 

 

==========Bad fix to make it work=============

 

Do Until objRecordSet.EOF
 strName = objRecordSet.Fields("Name").Value
==> strADSPath = objRecordSet.Fields("ADSPath").Value
==>' Go get multi-valued description attribute from object using ADSpath
==> strDescrip = GetObject(strADSPath).description 
 strOS = objRecordSet.Fields("operatingSystem").Value
 strOSV = objRecordSet.Fields("operatingSystemVersion").Value
 strOSSP = objRecordSet.Fields("operatingSystemServicePack").Value
 strLocation = objRecordSet.Fields("distinguishedName").Value
 fileTxt.WriteLine(strName & "," & strDescrip & "," & strOS & "," & strOSV & "," & strOSSP & "," & strLocation)
objRecordSet.MoveNext
Loop