Database professionals are familiar with ADO and SQL, but most of us have had little exposure to Active Directory (AD) programming. Active Directory Service Interface (ADSI) is like ODBC in that it's an open-programming API. But instead of communicating with every major database management system (DBMS), ADSI helps you access and manage multiple directories such as Windows Directory Service, Novell Directory Service (NDS), and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)-based directories. For a good overview of ADSI syntax and an easy way to quickly get started with ADSI scripting, see "Active Directory Service Interfaces Scripting Tutorial" in the Additional Resources box, page 18.