Identity and Access Management are repidly gaining importance as key areas of practice IT industry, and directory services provide the fundamental building blocks that enable them. For enterprise developers struggling to build directory-enabled .NET applications, The .NET Developer's guide to Directory Services Programming will come as a welcome aid.
Microsoft MVPs Joe Kaplan and Ryan Dunn have written practical introduction to programming directory services, using both versions 1.1 and 2.0 of the .NET Framework. The extensive examples in the book are in c#; a companion Web site includes both C# and Visual Basic source code and examples.
Part 1: Fundamentals
Chapter 1: Introduction to LDAP and Active Directory
Chapter 2: Introduction to .NET Directory Services Programming
Chapter 3: Binding and CRUD Operations with DirectoryEntry
Chapter 4: Searching with the DirectorySearcher
Chapter 5: Advanced LDAP Searches
Chapter 6: Reading and Writing LDAP Attributes
Chapter 7: Active Directory and ADAM Schema
Chapter 8: Security in Directory Services Programming
Chapter 9: Introduction to the ActiveDirectory Namespace
Part 2: Practical Applications
chapter 10: User Management
Chapter 11: Group Management
Chapter 12: Authentication
,etc.