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PowerShell Script to Query and Add AD Users to SharePoint List
In one of the SharePoint projects I worked on, one of the requirements was to insert OU-specific users and to insert these users as new records to a SharePoint out-of-the-box Contact List. (OU stands for Organization Unit) Because this involved querying a little bit of AD (Active Directory) and a little bit of the SharePoint object model, the easiest way I found to accomplish the task is to use PowerShell. This article gives an example script on how to do this task.
Why the Acquisition – Best Readers Ever – Responses
The responses I’ve been getting are longer responses, so I’ll spread them out a bit – but they’re great insight and thought into the whole mix of Oracle/Sun opportunities.
Roland writes "First, it makes the assumption that a significant amount of business (and obviously up-sell business) can be had by introducing someone to your style of database (not even brand!) by starting with open source.
The assumption would have to be that this would need to lead to a sale later down the road, or at least prevent an account from going elsewhere, otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense at all. Does having an open source alternative really accomplish this? I’m not sure."
I don’t think Oracle expects to be able to sell them Oracle instead of MySQL to the MySQL users. MySQL is a much better fit for typical web applications than Oracle (or many other typical enterprise OLTP databases for that matter) and most people that use MySQL know this very well.
However, there are quite a bunch of things MySQL does not so well. For example, for large data warehouses, you’re likely to be better of with a more specialized database solution and Oracle may have a chance to sell here.
In addition, not all the customer’s problems are database problems – if Oracle does a decent job of supporting and developing MySQL, they may become a respectable enough partner for current (larger) MySQL users to help them solve other problems such as systems integration.
"I don’t have the inside track on this, but I do wonder why it’s perceived that once I’m on a totally different open source platform, that I’ll magically want to convert my world and move to your commercial database, with likely completely different interfaces, completely different support mechanisms, completely different… well, everything."
I don’t think anybody perceives it like that, except perhaps you 😉 Like I just argued, MySQL / Oracle are completely different beasts and customers realize this, and most likely Oracle does so too.
"These companies are not non-profit; they have to have a business reason for doing what they’re doing and that means sales."
Ultimately, yes. But I think there’s more to it than that. Open Source adds a whole new dynamic to the development process. I’m not just talking about outside developers that offer new features and code patches, as this does not happen too often. There’s more to it than code though – in all successful open source projects I know there is a very lively culture of users engaging with developers and voicing their opinion on what is good and what is not so good. This goes way beyond the typical reactions you can expect from users that pay for your product and encounter some bug: in this case the customer doesn’t really want to influence anything – they simply want the problem fixed. With typical open source projects there is a very real chance for the user to influence the direction of the development process (although this does not mean everybody gets what they want in equal amounts). Conversely this provides a great opportunity for the development organization to learn about what the users really need and wish for.
"I would like to understand better what the business sense is for the customer in this type of acquisition/merger."
Now I don’t get you…You’re article talks all about how you don’t understand how the buying companies are expecting to do up-sells, and in the last para it turns out you’re wondering what business sense is for the customer. Anyway, I can try and answer. For the current MySQL users, there is little benefit, but Oracle may be able to help these customers solve problems they can’t solve with MySQL (both database and non-database problems) For the paying Oracle users, there is very real benefit. Like I mentioned, Oracle is not such a great database to build your website and web application on. With MySQL, Oracle can help these customers to provide a cost-effective scale-out solution for their web needs.
This is actually quite a common setup: Oracle as back-end database, used for data entry, and replication to many mostly read-only MySQL instances to power the website."
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