Compiling Rules and Data Source Extensions

In releases of FIM after the Beta 3 release, a change has been made to enable strong-name signing of Rules and Data Source Extensions. Existing compilations of Visual Studio projects will continue to run correctly without recompilation. However, when recompiling existing Rules and Data Source Extensions or creating new ones, you must reference the new strong-signed assembly MicrosoftMetadirectoryServicesEx.dll instead of MicrosoftMetadirectoryServices.dll. The new assembly is functionality equivalent to the previous assembly except that the new assembly allows for strong-name signing.

If you try to compile against the MicrosoftMetadirectoryServices.dll assembly, you will get compiler errors similar to the following:

Error: The type or namespace name 'xxx' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

In the error, “xxx” is the name of a function or type found in the Microsoft.MetadirectoryServices namespace.

If you are recompiling an existing Visual Studio project, make sure to delete the reference to MicrosoftMetadirectoryServices.dll and add a new reference to MicrosoftMetadirectoryServicesEx.dll. When creating new Visual Studio projects using Identity Manager, these projects will reference the new assembly.

For existing Rules and Data Source Extensions, no recompilation is required; these extensions will continue to function correctly.