Intended Audience

This book is intended for all Active Directory administrators, whether you manage a single server or a global multinational with a farm of thousands of servers. Even if you have the first edition, you'll find a considerable amount of new material in this book, which covers many of the new features in Windows Server 2003. To get the most out of the book, you will probably find it useful to have a server running Windows Server 2003 and the Resource Kit tools available so that you can check out various items as we point them out.

If you have no experience with VBScript, the scripting language we use in Part III, don't worry. The syntax is straightforward, and you should have no difficulty grasping the principles of scripting with ADSI, ADO, and WMI. For those who want to learn more about VBScript, we provide links to various Internet sites and other books as appropriate.