Query View - Members

[Guest]

So I created a custom Query that displays.
Directory Name
When Changed
When Created
Members

This is a list of all groups in an OU. It works but if the group has a large number of members it does not display any information in the Members field. Yak. I'm running version 7.2. Is this a bug, feature, etc...? Any way to list this information in a row by row way?

Thanks.

[cmccullough]

Re: Query View - Members

Fields in the right-hand window are limited to 255 characters, so anything longer than that will be truncated. You can use Exporter Pro for this as it has no limit.

[Guest]

Re: Query View - Members

Thanks for the quick reply. I would suggest an enhancement for the next version - Populate the field with the first 255 chars, and not leave it blank ;-)

[kstanush]

Re: Query View - Members

If more than 250 characters are encountered, Hyena will put ...! at the end of the field to indicate that the data is truncated : you should not see a blank entry. In my testing the only blank Members was if the group actually had no members.

Alternately, you might be seeing a group like Domain Users that normally won't have anything in the Members field, or perhaps you have members from another domain that are not actually stored in the Members field.

Another way to check is to right click on a single group, select Query Active Directory->View All Directory Attributes. Sort on the directory name and look for the values in Members. If you don't find Members, its because the group does not have any.

[Guest]

Re: Query View - Members

Hmmm looking at a group that displays blank. When I double click on the group and go to the Members tab there are members.

Right click and view all AD shows information shows information.

[This message has been edited by zman (edited 06-11-2008).]

[kstanush]

Re: Query View - Members

Don't look at the Members tab. Look instead at the value(s) of the Members attribute: they are not the same. I suspect that the Members attribute is not there for this group. Follow the above steps for seeing all of the directory attributes defined for that particular group.

[Guest]

Re: Query View - Members

Ok a good group shows member Member this groups shows member;range=0-1499???

BTW Exporter pro exported it as blank.

[This message has been edited by zman (edited 06-11-2008).]

[kstanush]

Re: Query View - Members

You stumbled upon a limitation in AD that I've read about but never seen before. I'm not sure that a workaround will apply in your case, but you can try a few things. Keep in mind that in Hyena, due to a Windows limitation, you can only see in the GUI the first 250 characters of any list control cell, so when you have a lot of group members, you can only see a handful. Exporter Pro does not have this limitation (sort of) as it writes the data to a file. But Windows can have problems handling files too when you load them into Excel if the column has too much data.

Anyway, read more about this issue here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms676302.aspx

and here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa772308(VS.85).aspx

Its hard to read this matter, but what Microsoft is saying is that to retrieve data that contains a large amount of information, you need to request it in blocks. I can't test the limits on my end, but what I did do was add a custom attribute to my query with the 'name' of:

member;range=0-*

You might need to remove the normal member attribute from the query as well. This will request the first through last member. It works for me, but I don't have the upper limit like you do.

You can also request any range, but a feature is for AD to not return an invalid range (partial range), so that is why I used the * wildcard. I just don't know what happens when you have something outside of the wildcard range.

Another idea is to use Exporter Pro and use the Group Members export instead of asking for the member attribute. AD is limiting the return of the information from the member attribute in your case. Range retrieval only makes sense if you are doing your own scripting, as its almost impossible to use it in software dynamically. The Group Members export uses a enumeration method in AD which is how the Members tab on the Properties dialog is generated.

Let me know if you learn anything as this is an area of AD that few people encounter.


[This message has been edited by kstanush (edited 06-11-2008).]