Finding Information in Active Directory

Client applications use various mechanisms to find information in Active Directory. Most requests for directory objects are carried out either through the Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) LDAP provider or through the LDAP API. Ultimately, every request is subject to the LDAP rules for locating objects Active Directory processes LDAP requests for locally stored directory information (that is, information specific to the current domain directory partition and implements a referral mechanism to locate objects stored in other directory partitions. If the object does not exist, an error is returned that states that the object is not in the directory.