joeware - never stop exploring... :)

I am sitting here watching Modern Marvels and working on ADMOD. I am _still_ working on the CSV/ADCSV functionality coupled with the flexible variable expansion I am putting in. It’s tough.

Even tougher will be trying to document _how_ to use the full functionality I am putting in. Seriously, it isn’t going to be a cake walk. The mods to admod are such that I can do things like I showed previously like autocreate any number of enabled users with a single command line or loop through an entire forest and switch the DNs for every user so that they are of the format “cn=lastname\, firstname,rest of DN” or switch the values in two attributes, etc.

A friend of mine used to complain about the complexity of the help for adfind, he is going to piss himself over the complexity of help for admod when this is done… I am POSITIVE someone will complain about it (besides my friend), but before anyone complains about it, recall I don’t need the usage myself, I have the source code. Feel lucky you have even a binary, you could be mucking with a crappy script or even worse, the GUI.

On the positive side though it will probably be the most powerful command line AD modification tool out there (if it isn’t already) however it still won’t do everything everyone wants. Oh well, I will be quite happy with it I expect and when it really comes down to it, that is what matters. 🙂

I now know why csvde doesn’t do updates of existing objects. Or at least I can visualize the reasons. Modifying objects is harder than adding new objects. How do you, for instance, specify clearning of one value of a multivalued attribute in a CSV? That is just one of the issues. I thought about it a few times, it is easier to explain not having a modification story versus explaining that you have a partial modification story and I know right now that I will only have a partial modification story.

In the end I expect there will be quite a few people who will say this is very very cool and for those people is why I am working so hard on this (well that and I want to see if I can do it and I want to use it). Quite a few people will probably be complaining about some things it can’t quite do though it may be close and not having a clue what it takes to write the code so thinking I was stupid or lazy. At them I just smile knowingly[1]. 🙂

My main goal is to try and be as flexible as possible so the tool can be used in ways I don’t forsee initially. Any time I had new capability I slowly start finding new solutions it can be applied to and much of the time, the flexibility I put in ends up being just enough.

Oi, it is almost 2:30AM, I should probably get a few hours sleep. I have to fly to Montreal, Canada tomorrow so today will be probably be overly busy getting ready for the trip. It is only an overnighter, but I almost hate those worse than going for several days. At least when you go for several days you can settle in a little. On an overnighter, it seems like you are always running.

    joe

 

[1] I have had other developers smile knowingly at me too. Being called stupid is a great way to instigate someone into trying to prove they aren’t. Plus, quite honestly, one day you may not see a solution, a week later it seems simple. I didn’t think I could get CSV output into AdFind without restructuring it and a silly little conversation made it all click in my head how to pull it off. It is a horrible evil hack and I wouldn’t let ANYONE see the source code for it but it works…  😉