Using WMI to Monitor AD

When the AD class is a structural class (e.g., the User class), the class maps to two WMI classes:

• One class prefixed with ads_ and implemented as a WMI abstract class (abstract qualifier set). For example, the User class will map to an ads_user WMI abstract class.
• One class prefixed with ds_ and implemented as a WMI dynamic instance class. For example, the User class maps to a ds_user dynamic instance class. A dymanic instance class has the provider qualifier, which specifies the provider that supports the class (in this case, Microsoft|DSLDAPInstanceProvider|V1.0).

Figure 1 shows the qualifiers for the ads_user class. You'll notice the presence of other qualifiers representing AD information defined in the schema and used to create the user class definition (e.g., governsID, lDAPDisplayName, objectClassCategory). In a similar fashion, the AD syntax is mapped to the WMI syntax with the help of qualifiers. Web Table 1 (http://www.winnetmag.com/windowsscripting, InstantDoc ID 41835) shows the syntax mapping and how AD values are converted to WMI-suitable values when necessary. The end result is that WMI exposes AD classes as WMI classes, as Web Figure 2 shows, and AD instances as WMI instances, with the correct syntax and value conversions. (There's one exception to the naming convention for the RootDSE Active Directory object. The RootDSE LDAP object available from any AD instance is represented by the RootDSE WMI class, which is an exact match between the names.) . . .