Personally? I like to think of AD as a GUI to Microsoft's implementation of LDAP. That simplifies a lot of things for me. However, there is more to it than that and the books you ordered should help in clarifying that.
You don't need to know LDAP to make AD work, but it helps. It's a great help to me to understand the differences between Microsoft's AD and Sun's implementation of LDAP or IBM's implementation or any of the others for the basics. When you start getting into managing the directory and the objects in the directory, Microsoft really differentiates itself with GPO's and the multi-master replication and the tools to support the infrastructure. As you're looking at this, remember that name resolution is one of the most important things you can deal with when making AD a solid enterprise app. The book from O'Reilly sounds like Robbie's book. I haven't read it, but have heard good things about it (what can I say Robbie, I don't have a budget for it :) If it's not Robbie's book for AD, then it would be a good idea to grab that one as well. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596004664/103-8355416-0173405 Sakari Kouti also has written a good book, called, "Inside Active Directory" that would be worth picking up. http://www.kouti.com/ You should be able to find some other information about books at http://www.activedir.org Al -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kenny Mann Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 11:41 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [ActiveDir] Active Directory and LDAP I don't understand LDAP and Active Directory as much as I should. So, I've ordered 2 LDAP books (O'Reilly and another) to learn. I'm curious as to how much LDAP and Active Directory have in common. Is AD just a GUI for LDAP? Perhaps there is a book everyone here recommends or will my LDAP books hopefully cover enough so I could be able to feel my way around Active Directory good enough? Doing a search with the word 'book' gives a ton of irrelvent searches in the archives. I saw one book but it's out of print. Kenny Mann List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
