Here I am just working away on Active Directory Third Edition with the Media Center playing recorded Will and Grace or Yes Dear! episodes in the background and I am sweating over some of the changes.
I mean some changes are easy, things that are wrong and it is a simple matter to correct the info like what classes can be used for containers in Active Directory[1] but some changes are difficult because while the info is wrong, it is actually probably ok when explaining the concepts and trying to correct it but still explain the basic concepts could make it more confusing than it needs to be. This book is supposed to be for everyone, beginners as well as people who have used AD for a long time but want to make their understanding a little better.
The last thing that I struggled with was “Data is stored within Active Directory in a hierarchical fashion similar to…” which is incorrect. Data isn’t stored in a hierarchical fashion in Active Directory, it is flat, like a pancake. It is a Jet Blue (ESE) Database. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ese/ese/portal.asp?frame=true
Not that that really matters to you as an end user though and when you go to use it, it seems like it stored that way so maybe it is just easier to let something like that go even though it really isn’t correct. I know Robbie is sitting there screaming “LEAVE IT LEAVE IT LEAVE IT” while I sit here for minutes thinking, well if I change it, can I make it as easy to understand? If I don’t change it, is there some serious implication if someone makes a decision later thinking this is exactly how it is….
As of this moment, I will leave it. But if I can think of another way to describe it which is accurate and easy to understand… well you know.
joe
[1] For instance many seem to think you can’t use O (organization) for a container in Active Directory when you absolutely can, you can only create instances of it under certain class objects though, those objectclasses being
>systemPossSuperiors: locality
>systemPossSuperiors: country
>systemPossSuperiors: domainDNS
The editor in me wants to say “Objects in Active Directory are -organized- in a hierarchical fashion similar to…”. It gets across the difference between AD and NT (which is what that it feels like that passage is trying to do) while side-stepping the implications of the actual data store structure.
But then of course, I’m making an editorial suggestion based on seeing half of a sentence, so the text around it probably renders my interpretation completely wrong. 🙂
It is indeed difficult! In fact the challenge for authors that are very intimate with the topic they are writing about is that readers don’t need (or generally want) every single detail. You can’t cover every detail about AD in a single book. Don’t confuse being comprehensive with being correct. The Windows 2000 Resource Kit was very detailed and covered a lot of material, but was very boring and not very well written.
I think your point about “Data is stored in AD…” is semantical. That sentence was speaking to the logical level. Change “stored” with “respresented”. Simple as that.
And let’s be clear, the primary target audience of this book should be beginners. Books whose target audience is “everyone” usually end up disappointing everyone. Advanced admins have either bought this book already or don’t need it by this point — they’d get AD Cookbook instead. The sweet spot for this book is people that don’t know AD that well. Imagine you’ve been running some Windows NT networks and now need to learn AD. Covering the intricacies of using the O objectclass or the details of how the ESE database is structured is for another book.