Active.Directory.Utility:

Purpose: Active Directory (AD) is an implementation of LDAP directory services by Microsoft for use primarily in Windows environments. The main purpose of Active Directory is to provide central authentication and authorization services for Windows based computers. Active Directory stores information and settings relating to an organization in a central, organized, accessible database. Active Directory is a directory service used to store information about the network resources across a domain. An Active Directory (AD) structure is a hierarchical framework of objects. The objects fall into three broad categories: resources (e.g. printers), services (e.g. e-mail) and users (user accounts and groups). The AD provides information on the objects, organizes the objects, controls access and sets security. Each object represents a single entity — whether a user, a computer, a printer, or a group — and its attributes. Certain objects can also be containers of other objects. An object is uniquely identified by its name and has a set of attributes — the characteristics and information that the object can contain — defined by a schema, which also determines the kind of objects that can be stored in the AD. Active.Directory.Utility (ADU) is a .NET based C# WEB Service that supports secure and unsecured operations.

SecureService.asmx is the web service class to used if your application require very secure communication with Active Directory. Each method call requires the following: AppKey - Generally a guid used to help encrypt/decrypt your password Username - An Active Directory account name that has rights to perform the AD function being called  Password - The Active Directory account encrypted password generated using the supplied encryption/decryption object The PROS of using this class:   1. Very Secure   2. All password passed are encrypted   3. If a unauthorized person gains access to this class they must have a valid AD username and an encrypted password using the ABizSoft.Encrypt.Decrypt object.   4. Each method call requires a AD account that has rights to that function. The CONS of using this class:   1. The caller application must capture/track/store/encrypt the AD account password before calling each method *Note* Methods CreateUser and ResetUserPassword ask for the users password which also must be encrypted first.

UnSecureService.asmx is the web service class to used if your application does not require very secure communication with Active Directory. Each method call relys on an impersonated account which has the needed Active Directory Rights to perform the AD function called. The PROS of using this Class  1. Less parameters to pass to each method. The CONS of using this Class 1. If a unauthorized person gains access to this class they have full access to your AD via the methods provided. Updating the web.config to use this Class 1. Simply find the identity section     <identity impersonate="false" username="domain\ad-username" password="ad-password" /> 2. Change impersonate  to true 3. Change username to your AD user account 4. Change password to your AD user account password