Active Directory Provider 05.00.03 Release

I'm happy to announce that after a long delay the 05.00.03 RC version of AD provider has now been designated as an official release. There are a number of reasons for the delay (core changes that broke the RC and needed to be fixed, changes in the release process, etc) but in the end the delay falls squarely on my shoulders.

The major changes in this release over previous releases are as follows:

1. Synchronization of user accounts against the AD have been significantly sped up.
2. Better eventlog information when a user enters invalid credentials
3. Search engine refinements (you can now allow a list of search engine useragents to crawl your site)
4. IIS 7.x Integrated Pipeline capability.

The IIS 7.x Integrated Pipeline capability has been something I've been working on since its release as the IIS team made some major changes to the way permissions are setup in IIS. Previously you were allowed to have Anonymous authentication to a complete site and have Windows Authentication setup on just one file. When IIS 7 was released they moved to a single stage authentication model which prevented the provider from working under the integrated pipeline. More information can be found here. Because of the changes and the workaround developed by IIS Program Manager at the time (Mike Volodarsky) there are a couple of additional steps required to get the provider to run under the integrated pipeline. These are explained in the Release Notes that comes with the provider and shows up when installing. You now have the choice of running under either the Classic or Integrated pipelines.

The provider can be downloaded from the AD Provider CodePlex site. If you are currently running the RC there's no need to install this version as it's exactly the same. If you have any problems with the provider please seek help in the provider forum.