Programming on Microsoft Active Directory Using Microsoft .NET Framework

Programming AD system managment tasks is still a pain with .NET, you may do this if you are developing a sophisticaed customized management tool that is not available from the suite of native tool from Microsoft.

Querying Microsoft Active Directory Using Microsoft .NET Framework Library - CodeProject

Operations on AD using DotNet

Most administrators will simply script the tools. We have a choice of using

1. VB/Java scipts
2. PowerShell scripting with the AD module(only for Windows 2008 R2)
3. DOS shell