The phenomenal growth of Java during the last year has made the language the popular choice of the world computing community. Due to its simplicity, portability and security and being the only ...

This column demonstrates how a Java program can authenticate users in an Active Directory and retrieve user attributes. The Hashtable created on code lines 11 to 17 sets up the InitialContext.

Note: Unlike most of the previous Java Fun and Games installments, which I wrote from the perspective of J2SE 1.4, this installment requires Java SE 5. Hidden words ...