Enumerating Active Directory Objects in Containers

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Scripting Guide

Using ADO and the ADSI OLE DB provider is not the only way to return results from a container. You can also enumerate the contents of a container, such as a domain or an OU. Enumeration is the process of returning a list of objects in a container.

Enumeration in ADSI is not as sophisticated as in ADO and is not as efficient for retrieving information about a large number of objects. However, container enumeration does provide limited capabilities, and writing scripts that enumerate containers is simpler than writing scripts that perform a search operation against Active Directory.