Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Security, Membership, and Role Management with C# and VB

Chapter 13. ActiveDirectoryMembership Provider

The ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider supports almost the entire set of functionality defined by the Membership API. You can create and manage users with either Active Directory (AD) or the standalone directory product Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (ADLDS), which resembles the ADAM on Windows Server 2003. Furthermore, you can use the provider in both ASP.NET and non-ASP.NET applications. Because the ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider closely mirrors the SqlMembershipProvider in terms of functionality, the interesting parts of ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider are how the provider works with the directory server and how certain Membership operations are mapped to AD and ADLDS.

This chapter will cover the following aspects of ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider in detail:

• How the provider works with different directory structures.

• Provider configuration settings.

• Notes on various pieces of provider functionality.

• The ActiveDirectoryMembershipUser class.

• Working with Active Directory.

• Configuring ADLDS to work with the provider.

• Using the provider in partial trust.