Accessing the Property Cache Directly with the IADsProperty Interfaces

The IADsProperty interfaces consist of IADsPropertyList, IADsPropertyEntry, and IADsPropertyValue. These interfaces provide methods to directly access and manipulate the properties of an object's cache. A property is known as a property entry and corresponds to an attribute defined in the schema. A property entry can have one, or many, property values. A set of property entries are organized as a property list.

The IADsPropertyList interface manages the property list of an ADSI object. The IADsPropertyEntry interface does that for a property entry. Similarly, the IADsPropertyValue interface represents one, or more, property values. Together, they provide a mechanism for users to:

• Work directly with the property cache.
• Work with directories that do not contain schemas, such as an LDAP version 2 server.

The IADsProperty* interfaces operate strictly on the property cache and do not make any attempt to cooperate with the server to retrieve or modify the data in the persistent store. As such, these interfaces are used only to examine and manipulate properties in the client cache. Before using these interfaces, you must call the IADs::GetInfo method or the IADs::GetInfoEx method explicitly to load the object properties into the cache, if the cache has not been initialized. After calling the methods of these interfaces, you must call IADs::SetInfo to persist the changes to the underlying directory store.

For more information, and sample code that shows how to use these interfaces, see Example Code for Using IADsProperty Interfaces to Access the Property Cache.