Intelligent Active Directory Integration

The fundamental proposition of this thesis is that(a) existing Active Directory APIs are restrictivethat (b) a better programming approach to theintegration of Active Directory exists and that (c)visual programming paradigms can be effectivelyapplied to achieve the goal of on-time softwaredelivery. Allowing the user to program usingdomain-specific visual languages creates an intuitiveinterface and in addition generates an underlyingframework to perform validation with security checkson the visual elements. Such a framework stimulatesrapid application development. Since the visuallydesigned diagrams cannot be executed code-generationis necessary. Supplementary security analyses wereperformed to ensure that no security vulnerabilitieswould be generated in the source-code. Generatedcode based on visual designs is finally compiledinto a Dynamic Link Library that can be included inexisting or new applications enabling them to usethe generated Active Directory methods. Thisadditional layer of abstraction allows theapplication's designer to focus on user interfacingand related tasks rather than Active Directoryprogramming.